Upload Notes: Star-Struck

This has been a loooong time coming... Wow! But it's finally here, and I hope you guys enjoy it. The Splatoon story! ... Th-The one I said I'd do based on, the uh, the poll. Survey. It was a survey. Y'all remember that one.

Yes, well, it's here. And of course, I have to apologize for the delay~ I hope the several Splatoon fans I have around here are satiated now that the story actually exists! And I think non-Splatoon fans can enjoy Star-struck as well -- it was written by a non-fan, after all! Yeah, that's right, I'm not even a fan of Splatoon. I've never played a game for more than a couple minutes! I've not even be very interested in Splatoon, but it is a universe I like to keep my eye on, and lotsa friends are really into it. So, you might think that this is one of the reasons it took so long to write...

... and you're not wrong! That was definitely a hurdle slowing me down. Not being familiar with the characters' personalities, not knowing the lore of the universe, it obviously holds me up and makes me hesitate to write stuff. I did research, sorta, as best as I could really short of just watching a longplay. I familiarized myself pretty well with the content, but the problem was that I didn't know what to do with it. I kept rolling around for ideas, trying to get a premise going that I was satisfied with... Unfortunately, I kept running into dead-ends and false-starts. I'd try to get myself do something that screams, "This is Splatoon! Wow!" but I couldn't capture that immersion; I'd try to make a generic story that's just implanted with Splatoon characters and references, but I couldn't convince myself to do something so shallow. Obviously, a lot of the appeal of reading sizey fanfics (or any fanfic) is seeing the characters be represented well.

But then it hit me, very randomly! For awhile, I had narrowed down my scope of potential stories to focus on the Super Mushroom vs. Super Star splatfest. That had some, uh, unmissable ideas. But even with that being served to me on a silver platter... I was having trouble coming up with a compelling story. Until one day I just happened to think of the promotion idea, and that the pair could both be giants. The concept then came to me of a "Human City" of tiny humans, and the rest was just coming up with fun interactions. The curse had been broken -- crazy!

So that's the origins for this story. The context itself, I think, turned out really fun! I'd been middling around with some ideas of models/model-esque characters going into tiny cities to take pictures, so I had some of these concepts already planned out. I think that's a really, really fun dynamic to work with, especially when you have a duo that contrast each other as much as Off the Hook. It was great to have two different perspectives paired up in a narrative that allowed them both to do what they wanted; Marina can be gentle and conscious of her actions, while Pearl can be rude and reckless, and neither of them feel compelled to stop the other, orrrr get into an argument, or anything.

Capturing the right personality for these two was... not really that hard, but it was sure awkward as hell. I gotta get this off my chest... I don't think Pearl or Marina are, uh, very appealing to me. They have cute charms for sure~ but they're not my type, like, at all. Even Marina, the... less-gobliny of the two... even she isn't up my alley. I think Splatoon's style just doesn't make for very sexy characters, ahaha. But of course, these two have tons of fans, so for me, it was just a matter of shifting my perspective and focusing on the traits I like.

Hence why I think non-Splat fans will enjoy this story, haha. I tried to get mileage more out of their personality than how they look -- that's a huge advantage for the written medium, ya' know. So when I could sort of "erase" Pearl's face from my imagination, I was left with her delinquent personality -- and I love delinquents! Writing her interactions came so easy, and it was such a relief to get momentum rolling. Once I realized how perfect these two are for diverse interactions, everything started coming together. I can even say that I was actively enjoying writing this story~ I think that might even show up in some of the text. When I reviewed it, I noticed my tone was just a little sillier, more laid-back in some ways...

Okay I seriously do have a weird thing for captive tinies. It's like every story lately, isn't it? Someone getting kidnapped or taken away at the very end... In this case, it's a hapless citizen left in Marina's butt crack. I was sort of hesitant on ending things this exact way, aha, but then I asked myself, "Do I think this is hot?" And yes, I do think it's hot, so it stayed. It's a little silly, but it's the sort of thing I'd imagine two friends doing, especially someone like Pearl. Other interactions I liked... Marina squeezing past the buildings was fun, just a classic trope. And Pearl spitting out the anchorwoman, that was a good moment too~ Marina's blurt of disgust really nails it.

Ah, and the tagging. Yes, so, I'm gonna try to tag things a little differently now! From now on, whenever I upload a story, I'm going to include a really quick summary of the content within. This isn't meant to nail every detail, but provide a focused idea of what kind of content the story focuses on, the interactions to be had. That way people who want to read that stuff can quickly find it! And those who don't want to read that stuff can filter past it. I'm still going to use the actual patreon tag system as well~ but honestly, I think all my stories could use a refresher at some point and have their tags fixed up.

I could really use your guys' help for this, actually~ If you ever think a story should be tagged with something, feel free to let me know in a comment or a DM. I'm wanting to flesh out my tagging so that readers have an improved experience, but I've never been very good of knowing just what to tag, without getting overwhelmed by all the nuances of what to tag as what. Let me know what you guys think and if there's any tags I should include~

Well, that's that. Hope you guys liked Star-Struck! This will be available for a week before going public~ Thanks for the support!