Prev. post was more about how life has been in general and how I feel about writing in general, but I do also need to talk more about this fic in specific!
The original plan, all the way back in late Feb, was that I'd finish that Reimu and Aunn fic in a few days and then do this, but I ended up having to write this beast as my first work in mostly a year, which makes this easily the toughest challenge I've ever experienced writing.
I really underestimated just how rusty I am and just how long I'd stay rusty. Every single sentence of this work, even the boring or short ones, took at minimum an entire minute to make sure they said what I wanted to say. I did not have the stamina or skill to finish this in the time frame I wanted at all. Some nights I'd spend 3-5 hours total with my notes app open and still put out under 750 words of actual progress. I don't even know if I could've finished this within the month if I didn't have a night of possession last week where I wrote a little under 4k words of this in one sitting.
And as for the actual story? I'm not as happy as possible with the result. Standalone I love what I've put out, but I wanted this fic for TCM to be a lot more than just... a really long interpretation of Ichirin's backstory accompanied by some handholding.
I had even more to say about that backstory, too! I have this whole story in my head about how she became a youkai and what kind of youkai she is! I could (and might) write an entire oneshot about the temple's time sealed in the Underground!
I've always had such a huge interest in Ichirin. Her design rules, and she's a stand user. What more is there to ask for?
The Temple as a whole is such a great gang, especially with characters like Mamizou or Nue thrown in. Every time I see them they move a little further up to the #1 spot on my list of favorite 2hu groups, threatening to usurp Team 9 which has reigned since... shit, since I first learned about 2hu. I want to write all of them more eventually.
Not entirely sure how I feel about Letty, though. To quote a message I sent to W. D. Gaster,
i'm coming to realize this fic is just
introduce letty as this interesting character
have her meet ichirin and they have a funny interaction
ten seconds later MOVE BITCH!!! i slap letty out of the way and she doesn't do or say anything even remotely interesting for 6,000 words while ichirin tells her entire life story that i spent all this time hand crafting
which I think applies even after I gave her that sad bit towards the end. I don't dislike what she does on screen, I just wish I'd focused on her even a little bit more.
I'm actually quite glad I picked this for my pairing. Out of my four choices, I didn't pick Chen/Kogasa because I've always interpreted Chen as a kid and writing a non-romantic work for TCM would be lame. I didn't pick Iku/Satori because I really can't bring myself to care for Iku, and writing Satori interacting positively with anyone but her housemates is surprisingly difficult. I didn't pick Youmu/Yukari because I already know those two characters much too well for it to be any fun for me or the reader. I wanted a challenge, of course, so I chose this. Two characters who I barely knew anything about, that I'd have to find common ground between.
As for doing that, I think I did good. Giving them the familiarity with loneliness helped to establish a theme, and giving them entirely different ways of handling it helped to develop a dynamic.
Overall, the only part of this fic I'm entirely disappointed with would be the lack of yuri. My last submission was gayer than Elton John's sunglasses, and this one kind of caps out at them being in an implied romance.
I was gonna keep this a secret, but I wanna write a much shorter second chapter soon. They're gonna kiss.
I hope that my further writings are easier than this one. I miss posting weekly.
Love you guys. Thanks for reading.
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