I could go on and on about “all good things must come to an end”, but I’ll spare y’all the dramatics and get to the point. Due to a lack of engagement, a profound unhappiness with the current quality of chapters, mismatched lore consistency and character trajectories, chronic burnout that is causing constant negative physical/mental health issues, an abysmal work/life balance, and perfectionism reaching critical levels...
All future chapter uploads of my Bad BatchxOC Clone Wars era Fix-it AU (Adventures of an Idiot) are cancelled, effective Oct 31st.
This isn’t a hiatus, unfortunately, but a full abandonment of the plan for full books. It’s not orphaned, and isn’t up for grabs, but any full releases of polished chapters are halting indefinitely. The engagement and motivation just… aren’t here anymore. Haven’t been here for a while. I’m been putting it off, but the fact is the fandom has mostly moved on. Gone with it is my motivation for polished chapter releases, and as I result I fear I’m verging into “Arcane Season Two/HTTYD 3” territory. Concepts are there, but the finished products just don’t… TtFR doesn’t feel the same as OtRaTtW, ya know? OtRaTtW will always be my favorite, and I wish I could recreate the same magic, but the fact is… I’m older. Busier. Tired…er.
I don’t have the time nor motivation nor energy to dedicate to this series anymore, and it just… doesn’t feel right pushing out content just to push content. Plus, the story was about to get into some more heavy/sensitive topics and I didn’t want to haphazardly throw them together with reckless abandon. And… admittedly some of the stuff got personal. More personal than should be shared to the assorted internet denizens. Maybe its the whole 25-means-developed-frontal-lobe joke, but still.
That’s not to say all new A!AU content will cease to exist. I’ll still post things (lore, art, remaster snippets) on tumblr and my Discord server (poke me for the link, I usually post a couple times a week). Full chapters in chronological order are stopping, though. I’ll probably share snippets of the remastered stuff, as I do plan to go back and remaster the whole series since I know now what exactly I want to do with the characters/arc/etc.
I don’t want this any longer than it has to be, so I’ll end it with this.
As it stands now, Adventures!AU is around 600k in published words. Taking into account all the scrapped concepts, drafts that were rewritten, deleted content, one-shots, and side lore… I’ve probably written around 1 million words on this series. In five years. On top of a 15-credit-per-semester bachelor’s degree, where I got a 3.93. On top of a Masters degree, where I got a 4.0. On top of my first internship. On top of my first real job. On top of my original stories side projects (which probably average around 200k on their town). On top of… a lot of personal life stuff.
Even if I’m not proud of the latest quality or my CoryxKenshin level hiatuses (bro I feel you on an astral plane level), I’m damn proud that I wrote as much as I did or stuck with it as long as I have.
For any who would like a hardcopy of any story, I will happily provide you with the formatted PDF of these four books.
I have used TheBookPatch in the past, and really love the quality (and price) of the books I printed from them in the past. OtaGS and OtaRaTtW differ slightly in the PDF and fanfiction site content, mainly when it comes to Shadow's pronouns, and the OtaGS PDF has two bonus chapters. The PDFs are free, the prices below are what it would cost you to print them with TheBookPatch (before the like $12 shipping fee). Unlike most sites, you can order a single book so you aren't having to bulk order or anything.
OtaGS (25 chapters, 200-210 pages, ~10$)
OtRaTtW Part 1 (Chapters 1-40, 530-540 pages, ~20$)
OtRaTtW Part 2 (Chapters 41-66, 350-360 pages, ~15$)
TtFR Part 1 (Chapters 1-21, 250-260 pages ~$12)
And with that stereotypical fanfiction Author’s Note (that I want to add more to but I am already overextending), in the words of the iconic Spongebob Squarepants:
Love going to see the backrooms and getting put in the farthest damn showroom at the very very back near the alleyway exit doors past both sets of bathrooms
They said you gonna get the immersive isolation experience
