#cause I’m sitting on 20k words written for future chapters

[oldfashionedmorphine]

gonna try writing again even though it’s after 12am…

[leopah]

Change: Afterword

The last chapter goes up shortly, so here’s the afterword I wrote upon finishing. Thanks for reading! <3

Well, here we are again. Nearly a year after Now and Forever finished posting and about a year after I finished writing it, I’m done posting another multichapter Noragami fic. I’ve gotta say, it feels good to have gotten it done at long last.

I first got the inkling of this story back around when I was finishing up NAF. My two favorite Noragami fics are God of Ashes and Swing for the Fences (both of which I cannot recommend enough), and I was thinking what I admired about them aside from the phenomenal writing and storytelling was how the authors took canon, AU’ed it, and started from the beginning. They reinterpreted canon events while following their own plots, and it made me think that I wanted to do something like that too, since NAF didn’t let me start from the beginning of the timeline. I started thinking about role reversal since I’ve seen a few fics like that, and decided on the Hiyori-god Yato-shinki Yukine-human I ended up with for two reasons: (1) I wanted to change all the roles of the main trio and (2) not write shinki!Hiyori a second time. So this was the only way to fulfill both of those requirements. But I’m happy with how it worked out! I haven’t seen this particular spin on the trio’s relationship in fic form, so it was fun to be able to explore it how I saw fit and craft their characters, motivations, and backstories while keeping their new identities in mind. More ideas came piling on one after another, I figured out the structure and arcs, and generally had a blast coming up with ideas. (If this says anything, my planning doc is nearly 10,000 words of me throwing out ideas to myself and talking through them.)

Now that I’ve probably bored you to death with talk of the origins of this fic it’s time for shoutouts. My biggest shoutout to my partner in crime Jo ( @eerna ), who not only helped me organize the big bang but agreed to partner with me for it too. Knowing she was by my side helped me a lot when I was really struggling to stay on track to finish, so thank you for that. Your enthusiasm was contagious, to say the least.

Another huge shoutout to my beta Gio ( @themusicalbookworm ), who read the fic when it was still 20,000 words long (and missing a lot of editing), only to start rereading it as the beta once I’d finished my editing. Gio, you provide the best encouragement and leave the best comments, so thank you so much for putting up with me during all my trials and tribulations as I worked on this. Being the beta for a 50k fic isn’t easy, let alone reading the chapters out of order because I finished them out of order, but I’m so glad you were able to help me out.

Last huge shoutout to Scarf ( @scarfblogs ), who also read this fic when it was in its early 20k stages and left wonderful comments as well. I hope the rewrites, edits, and new chapters made it a different experience from the last time. Thank you for the encouragement, and for being there when I needed to yell about the complications of writing longfic.

Other shoutouts to: my fellow mod Fushi, the other big bang participants, and the Skype folks. Your enthusiasm and participation in this event (even if it was just signal boosting) means a lot.

And now for the ever-present question: Will I do this again? Honestly, I have ideas for other Noragami fics (which are non-canonverse AU’s and one-shots rather than multichapters), but I’m not sure if or when I’ll get around to writing them.

That doesn’t mean I’m retiring from fic though! I purposely designed this story so that the last chapter isn’t the end of the story, just of the narrative arc. This means I can continue adding chapters if I get more ideas. And with the manga coming back from hiatus soon, who knows? Maybe that’ll cause some things to click and I’ll be inspired to reinterpret them into the world of this fic. I want to at least keep the possibility of more chapters of Change open despite the fact that I completed this narrative arc. So stay tuned! Maybe in a few months there’ll suddenly be more chapters. I’ve got vague ideas for future chapters at least, so I’m by no means definitely done with this fic or this world.

As for writing for other fandoms, that’s a distinct possibility! I want to spread out more, but good ideas are hard to come by, plus I have to be really invested in the source material to have the motivation to carry out my ideas. I guess we’ll see where the future takes me.

But for now I really need to get back to working on my novel--I said I would after I finished NAF, then I promised myself I’d work on it more after NaNoWriMo, then I started organizing the big bang so I had to concentrate all my willpower into finishing this fic. The good news is, my writing process changed over the course of writing this fic on deadline and I think that will help me continue to power through with my novel. If I get frustrated or stuck, I may just end up turning back to this fic to help me vent my frustrations, which was how I got 10k written during NaNoWriMo.

Despite this fic being half as long as my last, it feels like it took twice as much effort to finish it because of the way I did things. That being said, it feels really good to finally have this story finished and out in the world instead of sitting on my hard drive like it has been for the better part of a year. With any luck, I’ll see you guys around again. Until the next time, peace out!

[beauregardance]

Why Rewrite?

I’m rewriting cover my skin (Sun-Kissed Light) due partially to becoming more conscious about what kind of mlm fanfiction I’m writing (as a cis-woman outside of the mlm community) and whether or not it contributes to homophobic fujoshi-esque tropes of torture porn. I’ve elaborated more on it under in this post.

Since I’ve already explained my feelings there, I won’t be talking more about it unless anyone else has questions, which I will gladly answer.

Now more on the logistics!

Confessions:

1. I did not intend for it to be a long fanfic. In fact, I went out seeking 3 chapters. And then 5. And then? Indefinite. Which leads me to my second point.

2. I had no plot.

No really, I didn’t. I had absolutely no idea where I was going with it, and my continuity errors (though I fixed them on rereads) were examples of this meandering. I had no idea who Beatrice was. I was going to cross that bridge when I got to it.

3. Unrelated subplots. 

I had no main plot, but I had too much going on the background that I wasn’t committed to exploring, and it’s very visible on a reread now. Examples include: 

Piper/Reyna, which, shame on me, wasn’t explored enough or properly!

Bianca di Angelo - which YIKES veered into ableist depictions because I had no idea what kind of illness she had and that’s already a red-flag. To understand better: Koogi from Killing Stalking not having researched BPD, and saying that she characterized Sangwoo as “not normal” and it happened to “fit” with BPD. Mental illnesses does not mean someone is unable to function in society, like I wrote in with Bianca. That shit was not okay, and I was 18 when I wrote that, not 14. I’m owning up to my mistakes now.

Hazel’s mom. What was she doing? Why was she estranged? Why is she absent from the family picture? I remember it was an important part of the story...but how? I had no idea what she did in this fanfiction to be honest. That piece was not fleshed out.

Octavian. He was going to be a subplot of the story that dealt with bullying but I don’t even think I thought more about that than beyond the first introduction.

Drew Tanaka. Who is she? Why? What does it have to do with this? What was I planning with her character? Obviously I knew I wanted to redeem her, but that’s pretty much it.

Percy Jackson. He appeared in like two chapters and disappeared. I don’t think I wanted to do anything with his character except to show that Nico’s interest was switching over, but it still didn’t make a lot of sense.

4. The main characters themselves were not fleshed out.

Yes, they are already existing characters that don’t need to be fleshed out because RR has already done it. But. BUT. That is no excuse to write them blandly without any hints of AU. That’s what an AU is - they’re slightly different depending on their circumstances. That’s why Nico is a Levesque! Yet there’s nothing to be said about aspirations, dream jobs, futures. The only thing we know is that Will is going to an Ivy League school for the life sciences. That’s it. And that’s not enough. I knew Hazel was in college, but where? What is she studying? And Reyna is practically a blank slate. She cares deeply about Nico and is a Big Lesbian, which is great, but she needs more development. Piper - oh Piper. Why is she so casual about Jason having cheated on her? Did she never love him in the first place? Was she in love with Reyna the whole time but was scared due to going to a conservative school? Unfortunately, I knew I had never planned on expanding these questions, and she would always be relegated to the detective girlfriend role with no depth of her own.

5. The School / Geography

No layouts. Nothing. The only thing keeping track of the story for me was labeling the top of each chapter with the week day it took place (e.g. Monday, Tuesday etc) in my document. I had no school layouts - which okay, can be overlooked since school was almost over, but I spent 20k words in that school. Some people write a whole tragedy in 20k. Basically, when you spend that much time, there needs to be some sort of layout. Something to structure it. I had absolutely no structure.

While speaking about the school, why is it so intensely homophobic? I had written it in just for the sake of homophobia but it doesn’t sit right with me. Yes, people can be just homophobic but there’s something wrong about this.

I also had no sense of where this was taking place. The suburbs was my assumption, but it could easily be the city. Anyways, main point is: needs more development.

Now onto the writing aspect:

1. 20k words, and nothing happens.

Literally...nothing happens. I used to make fun of Twilight but....literally nothing happens in it, which is why it was dragging on so long. Part of it has to do with the fact that I didn’t know what I was going towards.

2. The purple prose is everywhere.

The reason why it’s so long and nothing happens is because there is so much purple prose. At the time I thought I was being touchingly poetic. When I reread it last week, it was too much. So many descriptions and feelings that could be cut. So many little details that took away from the scene and distracted the reader. Yes, while it was poetic, it also felt like a try-too-hard poetry, like I was forcing something out that didn’t want to be written.

3. This post.

I think this says everything about writing on abuse. I was talking in the negatives all the time. Nico was in a constant state of emptiness with no let up, no presence of anything replacing his security.

4. It doesn’t interest me anymore.

Mainly because I had no plot to begin with. Something needed to change before I could go back to it. I couldn’t keep writing chapter nine like I wasn’t feeling all of these things.

5. There was so much stalling, not a slow build or a slow burn. Just stalling.

This also had to do with not knowing where the plot was. I was putting off so many things because I didn’t know what to do with them. The main plot, I didn’t know where to go. The sub-plots - they were also a lost cause. I also knew I didn’t want Will and Nico to get together that early. But in the midst of trying to write a slow burn, it doesn’t read like a slow burn. And I think what’s essential about this fanfic is that it needs to be a slow burn. That’s the whole focus of this fanfiction. The fact that it doesn’t read like one makes it, frankly, kind of boring to read.

6. Falling in Love?

Because...it doesn’t feel like it. It’s abrupt, comes out of nowhere, and yes fanfiction can be unrealistic, but I was kind of aiming at some semblance of realism here. The gradual love didn’t feel real enough, which is why on a reread, I couldn’t invest in Will and Nico. That’s also why it didn’t feel like a slow burn. Because I didn’t buy that Nico was falling in love with Will and vice versa.

That’s all she wrote for now. 

Now what can I do with all of these notes I have for myself? Well quite simply - change it up - find the plot - retcon, and dig deeper with this story that I’ve only been skimming the surface with. Which is why I’m going to be uploading my old chapters onto my tumblr for archiving while I update with newer chapters. Some subplots are going to be retconned (you can count on the Bianca subplot disappearing because it’s disrespectful af!), replaced, or entirely made anew. So what’s going to change about the new rewrite? Is it going to be basically the same? Well yes...but also no. We’ll see when we get there ;) sketch out the entire plot! But yes, I do have a basic idea of what is going to say, and a hint to what happens in five words is: The Winter’s Tale - William Shakespeare. Take what you may from that!

ARCHIVES

Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight