I ran into a little problem with writing this chapter, which is kind of the reason it took so long. While reading some manga chapters to refamiliarize myself with the order of certain events, I was hit with a big panic that my characters here don’t really seem true to their canonical selves. For some reason this really bothered me and got into my head, and I struggled to write anything that wasn’t basic dialogue without psychoanalysing the way my characters interacted with each other, the way they spoke and acted. And when I say struggled, I mean really struggled. I wrote the majority of this chapter while travelling, which is usually my prime uninterrupted time where I know nobody's gonna be able to sneak up on me and read over my shoulder. But instead, I spent a lot of my travel-writing time sitting glaring at my laptop or looking out of the window trying to summon the ghost of Shakespeare to help me out with whatever the fuck I was struggling with. I don’t think I realised why I was struggling until after finishing all the canonical manga inserts, which, you know, isn’t ideal at all. I’ve dealt with writing slumps before, but this was different, this was anxiety over it. No hobby of any kind should make anyone anxious, especially if it's something they love. Which I do, love this, it’s the whole reason why I write it. I enjoy the versions of Erwin & Levi that I have in my head, and I like putting them down into my work, the way that I think of them. So, I’ve decided that from now on I’m going to follow canon as closely as possible but not worry when the characters diverge. Because in no world can you change something so fundamentally basic about two characters and have them act completely the same. If the canon says ‘hurry’ but I say ‘quickly’, I won’t lose more sleep worrying over it. As of this chapter (16) releasing, I’ve updated all of my chapters and put in short generic descriptions of what each chapter is going to be about. I will also update the description of the whole fic to better resemble what the fic is going to look like, maybe not complete retelling but character-is-slightly-different, but canon compliance as close as I can get it. Now that I’ve made this decision, and written this paragraph out, I’m going to return to my writing with fresh eyes. 8-hour car ride ahead of me, laptop, please hold up your charge!
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