all you described sounds like a blessing and a gift to anyone who can read, and i can only wonder how you managed not only to come up with eight different endings, but to tie all of this into the narrative in a coherent way, and to put together a decision-making system of some sort …
most of interactive novels barely have four endings, and considering your plans to spend your month off in such a way instead of, like, taking a break from the burden of existence as a person — that makes your love of self-torture apparent, not gonna lie
(it doesn’t matter who i am, i promise 🥂)
This fic was originally the script for one of the stories for an Otome Game No.6 fans were making 13 years ago. It was much simpler and leaner, barely 6k with it's 8 endings. The game project was scraped and the script had just been sitting in my WIP folder for a decade.
When I got back into no.6, I hooked up my portable drive where I have my massive No.6 fanart, fanfic and official content collection and went on a trip through nostalgia lane. I found the script again. Read through it and felt this deep pang for it not having ever seen the light of day because it's the most unique thing I've ever written and something I was actually proud of.
So I sat with it for days. I brainstormed some ideas with friends on the no.6 server and eventually decided that I would turn it into a Choose Your Own Adventure type of fic. I looked at other CYOA fics on Ao3 to see how they did it and it's not perfect but it's doable.
So I started rewriting the whole thing as an actual story and not a script. It's already past 40k and I suspect will be around 70+80k by the time I'm done. The longest route should be about 10k+ISH.
It has 8 endings because it is written twice for both Shion's and Nezumi's paths. Each has 4 endings. Their paths are drastically different too despite sharing some common elements so you are never reading the same scene from a different pov. They have different stories. It's hard to explain but such a joy to write (sometimes it gets very confusing to organise tho).
Spending my break time writing is not only a choice but also a dream. I love writing and I feel like I never have enough time to do it. A month off is my idea of heaven, first time I'll get to have such a long break time (especially in summer). So I genuinely look forward to it.
