July 19th to 24th Schedule

Whew, been a while since I did one of these, hasn’t it? Sorry about that; the truth is that I’ve been exhausted due to a mix of pushing myself too much at the end of June and the start of July, the heat wave and my nerves not letting me sleep too much, some family stuff, and… And, well, today’s July 19th.

My birthday.

And now I’m forty years old.

…

Yup, no panic attack incoming or anything like that. Really. It’s an arbitrary number that doesn’t hold any significance whatsoever. Really. No reason at all to take a deep breath and reflect on the past year and where my life’s going!

Really!

So let’s do just that.

The date I started the Patreon page is kinda nebulous, because there was a long period of time where I had a Subscribestar page that wasn’t working without telling me it wasn’t working, but, to simplify, let’s say it was about a year ago that I started going at this full tilt rather than posting sporadically on QQ (and mostly omakes). There were a few reasons behind that decision (a dissatisfaction with my job at the time combined with said job giving me fewer assignments as said dissatisfaction made my output slower and worse—I’m awful at this whole passive-aggressive thing—that finally gave me the push to go ahead with something I’d been pondering for a long time… may be the most obvious of those reasons), but most of it boils down to me wanting not only to live off my writing, but to make it my writing rather than what someone else assigned for me.

This has been a mixed bag.

I’ve always loved fanfiction. I love how it lets us explore characters and settings that maybe didn’t focus on things we’d rather see, how it continues past unsatisfying endings, or lets us have a look at may-have-beens. I have seen true masterworks in the genre, and I’m really happy to have contributed at least in some small way to it, to give back some of the many, many hours I devoted to reading it.

But… I think I’m hitting some limits.

This isn’t about the economic part. While I am by no means getting rich off this, I’m more or less making a living now, thanks to the additional generous contributions of some commissioners (and those of you who have given more than asked for, without getting anything in return other than my often understated gratitude—thank you, everyone, really; you’ll never know how much this means to me). But, even if the economic part is not an immediate concern (I mean, I’d obviously slept better with a wider safety margin, but this is enough to keep going), the creative part is kinda getting to me.

I tend to make my characters mine. Hachiman is his own thing, and has wildly diverged from his canon self in what I feel is an organic way, while Iroha is a plausible interpretation of her canon self that still is, I feel, unequivocally mine. Lisa (and her Taylor) is currently so far from her canon self that I can’t even try to address the occasional comment about it without laughing. Wordsworth may as well be an original setting (and I’m sometimes frustrated that it isn’t). And so on.

I could just keep writing about all the little ways in which each character and story have been turned into something that, no matter the original setting, I now feel as entirely mine, but the thing is… they aren’t. There’s still some part of me that feels the duty not to stray too far from canon without some justification, and the part of me that gets antsy when I post something that someone will object to because it doesn’t fit their view of the characters, not to mention the part of me that wants this to reach a broader audience.

So, what am I getting at?

Gods, I wish I knew.

I’m not gonna stop writing fanfiction, and I’m not gonna drop any of the stories until I reach a satisfying ending or their commissioners tell me it’s time to drop the curtain (which will make me strive to give them said ending). I feel a duty to the characters, to make something worthy of them, and I’ll keep endeavoring to fulfill that goal.

But maybe I won’t start new fanfics? I currently see the ending of a few of my stories, and I am exhausted enough to know my current workload is not sustainable. This year has allowed me to see my limits were far beyond what I’d always thought, but the past few months have, in turn, showed me that I still have them, that there are still things I can’t do.

Shocking, I know.

So maybe I’ll finish a few of the shorter tales while I keep working at steering the bigger ones toward a satisfying payoff. And then… Maybe I’ll try my hand at another original work? So far, I’ve only shown you Ginosko (that is still very much influenced by my talks with Shaderic, the commissioner), Tales from a Lewd Fantasy World (that, due to their nature, haven’t yet shown what I actually have in mind for the series), and the first chapter of Hunger and Longing (which keeps languishing in its unfinished state). I don’t know how many of you will be interested in my other ideas for original stories, and how many of you just want to keep reading my takes on a particular fandom.

Basically? I don’t know how many of you will stay.

So, this is kinda scary, even if it’s still far away on the nebulous horizon, but I think it’s something I need to do, and something I need to prepare for. I’ve often wondered how different things would be if I, instead of trying to juggle about twenty stories at once, had focused all of this energy on a single tale worth telling.

And… I guess I kinda want to find out?

Because I feel it was the right decision at the time for me to write as much as I could, from as many varied points of view as the characters offered me, and in as many genres as possible (heck, I’m loving the horror/snark angle I discovered in Periodical Cicadas). It definitely was the right decision to engage with so many of you, wonderfully friendly and supportive people. It even was the right decision to see how feasible it was for me to write at a rate that would make Stephen King tell me to get a life.

It was the right decision.

But, as the tale of Disciple Dude-bro reminds us: now is the time to make the right decision. Not the one that was made before.

So I want to find it, this right answer to that always-changing question. I want to see if I can bring something new to the table, something that, this time around, nobody else, not even me, can say it’s not mine. And I want to see if it’s worth it.

So, let me know if you would as well.

Also! Schedule!

- Tuesday: That’s today, in case you’re wondering if I’ve somehow forgotten (which I may have). I’ve got the seed for Wake-up Call’s chapter in mind, but it may not end up into a chapter worth reading until tomorrow morning. We shall see.

- Wednesday: I need (like, physically need) to finish the damn Batman chapter. It’s been postponed long enough.

- Thursday: All Right! Fine! I’ll Take You! shouldn’t take much effort, because I’ve mostly already written it in my head—intro monologue and everything (the most vital part of the chapter!).

- Friday: I’ll start working on the A Pure Knight’s Natural Enemy chapter, which will obviously take more than one day, if I keep stretching them into full novellas…

- Saturday: my friends kinda made me promise I wouldn’t work on Saturdays. I suspect religious reasons, because it would be bizarre for them to legitimately want to spend time with me.

- Sunday: Hopefully, A Pure Knight’s Natural Enemy will be posted.

So, that’s it, my overly ranty monologue that I somehow feel I’ve already written in various segments at different points, and the always overly ambitious schedule attacking yet again. It looks like the years won’t change me.

Other than you know, having less hair and more waist. That’s a change. I think it even counts as character growth, even if only the literal kind.

…

I swear, if after writing all this vanilla, I end up as a Fat Bastard, my rant will reach the very Heavens…