#a drop echoes

[andagames]

Wait. I...

I wrote this, didn't I? I wrote about Sebastian getting his fortune told and Welwick told him she couldn't provide any further details because "Matters of the heart are not for me to see"!

In-game, this is the Wizard's line but look look I wrote it in this chapter!

[andagii-writes]

I just finished reading A drop echos in the hollow, I was in a mood for a Sebastian fic a couple of days ago and I picked your fic on ao3 and I wasn't able to put it down, your writing is *beatiful* and I love how you write the characters, I think your Sebastian characterization is one of my favorite one yet.

I'm bad with words, just wanted tonlet you know how much I enjoyed your fic :)

Eeee thank you for the lovely comment! I know it's been a while since I uploaded A Drop Echoes but I'm still as excited as ever to see readers like you enjoying my work!

(I was so happy I showed off this comment to my sister ehehe)

Comments like these, no matter how old the piece is, are truly the best at lighting a fire in me. That said, I'm working toward bringing something even better to you all, though I can't say much about it yet.

I'll have to release some smaller projects in the meantime!

[andagames]

So guess who was Kutone’s secret Santa this Winter Star?

No unfortunately it was not her husband.

Her father-in-law bwahahahaha.

Holy shit he gave her a glow ring I was expecting a nautilus shell or smth. 

[andagii-writes]

Catch-Up!

Folks, it’s been a good long while. Thanks to the hell-on-earth that was Holiday Retail (which officially starts in October, okay? Remember that. Holiday season for retail starts in October and ends mid-to-late January, so give your frazzled retail friends some slack), and also the personal purgatory that was Changing Breaths (ff.net here), your local Andagii thought she’d lost ALL of her talent and inspiration.

And also, like about 75% of the time, she wasn’t in a good place.

That’s why I held off on posting updates and progress as much as possible, because honestly? I had nothing. No words. No pixel art. No cool stuff except the darkest, most virulent thoughts and feelings Dark Andagii could stir in the abyss.

But I looked over my outline for Sunset Stars the other day, and you know what?

It’s a damn good story with some pretty interesting characters, so I’m back on it.

I can’t give an exact time table for when I can start uploading it, but hopefully soon? Please look forward to it!

Get ready for Sunset Stars by reading A Drop Echoes in the Hollow, my first Stardew fic, here. (fanfiction.net here)

See some of my other WIPs and their synopses here. (Hint, hint, I might have another original synopsis up soon!)

Special shout-out congrats to Ginger and Draco @gingerdrakewrites for finishing y’all’s fic, and all the best wishes for your plans going forward!

Two more thank-you shoutouts to @shrialaharra and @seraphicsilverleaf for the comments and support you left in my inbox while I was away. While I sank into some dark waters, you guys kept me afloat with the light of your words. Thank you.

And now, for real...

[andagii-writes]

“A Drop Echoes” Postmortem

Or as I like to think of it, a grand old vomitfest that I've been writing in between chapters so I can keep myself oriented on the fic. And I waited until I finished uploading A Drop Echoes in the Hollow to post it here.

Speaking of which, did you guys enjoy it? While I see all the comments and kudos and bookmarks on AO3, as well as reviews, favorites, and follows on fanfiction.net, I just want to ask. It's literally been nearly 6 years since I posted ANY fanfic online, and having had a not-so-good experience with online socializing or collaboration before, I'd been fairly apprehensive to start posting again.

Shout-out to both Ginger and Draco @gingerdrakewrites and their fics for giving me the courage to move on from those bad memories, and spurring me to start writing and posting again.

I’m here to share some thoughts with y'all about this here fic, 'kay? It's gonna be a long one so pull up a chair, warm up a tea or coffee or cocoa or whatever, drape yourself in a blanket, and relax.

Regarding Kutone

Writing professors told us all the time, that the first full-length project we finish will almost always be some kind of autobiography.

While I haven't had the same tribulations as Kutone, yeah, she is my autobiography.

Mixed race, Afro-Asian. Fairly successful in academia and supposedly has the potential to do more, but she throws it away to pursue something for her own sake. Overcomes self-inflicted isolation and learns to trust and love people again. (Admittedly, I'm nowhere close to doing that last bit.)

After that, she's the ideal I want to be.

Successful. Cool. Sexy. Independent. A little bit taller. A bit of a baller. Badass. Experienced. Confident. I count all these things she has that I don't, and I shrivel up inside.

So here's Kutone, the woman I wish I could be, and I, as the writer, pushed her off her pedestal and shattered her. It felt nice. That there's character development, supposedly.

Writing professors and college-level workshop mates also told me "don't use exotic names for your characters."

To that I say fuck all y'all.

Regarding Sebastian

AKA, the major reason why I decided to purchase Stardew Valley in the first place. Funny story, this one. I was scrolling through the screenshots on the Stardew Valley Steam page, and I think there was a screenshot that happened to show Sebastian's sprite. "Oh okay," I think, "he's kinda cute."

My sister charges in, takes one look at the screenshot, and says, "Man I was about to say he's cute, but god that nose..."

And as we cackled at Sebastian’s expense, I bought the game and started playing it. Made Kutone my avatar (meaning she seriously had no significance until I developed a certain businessman...) and started futzing around in Stardew Valley. With Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing under my belt, I got it pretty quickly.

Met Sebastian and had to put my head down for a few minutes.

‘This man is a reflection of me,’ I thought. I know a lot of other players feel the same way, like the dev had unknowingly taken a piece of my psyche, molded it into pixels and coding, and then, huh, here's a relatable character named Sebastian. That being said, I wanted to write him in a way that avoided the usual tags and labels people tend to slap him under: "emo," "goth," "depressed," "anxious," "gloomy," and basically every other iteration of those words that I felt made him so... meh, you know?

I settled on a new label for him, a label intrinsic to A Drop Echoes: "pathologically introverted."

The guy's actually really expressive, you know. It's just that, due to not being able to wholly trust anyone, he doesn't readily show those expressions. Which would explain why he's such close friends with Sam, and it also gives him a whole other layer of characterization to work with. Minimal, yet loaded. I guess that's where the popular "emo" tag comes from, but I'm still not a fan of the nuances of that label. Yes, he's emotional, and he tries, I think, to not show it, but in the face of sheer logos (like Demetrius), Sebastian knows he doesn't stand a chance. He's hyper aware of the fact he's emotional, but can't compromise that with his more logical side. So he shuts it away.

He needs a safe place to open up. Sam is that safe place. Abigail is that safe place. To a lesser extent, Robin is that safe place. And in writing A Drop Echoes, I wanted him to find another safe place--a permanent safe place--in Kutone. Someone who's a lot closer to him in personality, and someone who seriously puts her faith in him as a safe place. More than anything else in his life, that reciprocation is the magic he needs to "come alive" again. After that is a matter of, will he take it and run and see how far he can go? He knows he has potential. And he has his plan: take his bike out and never look back. Head out to the city and live his ideal life there. Does he fulfill it?

The original game didn't let him.

I like to think Kutone did.

Regarding Rhei

Origin? I had a crush on someone a lot like him--though mine was more angelic in comparison to devilish Rhei--at the same time I remembered a rule in a handbook about no dating in the same workplace. Yeah...

Anyway, based on what I eyeballed from the comments, about 96% of you hated Rhei. How do you feel about him now? Tell me things!

At the time I wrote the chapter starring him, I made this post, which was basically me fangirling over my own character.

Bet you didn't click it. That's okay. TL;DR, Rhei very nearly destroyed the rest of this fic, because Kutone was thiiiiiiis close to getting back together with him. Maybe in some AU version of the fic, they did, and that would be an interesting story on its own. She would have totally broken Sebastian's heart. Totally. That would have been some fun angst to write, but dealing with love triangles and their fallouts--even thinking about that concept makes me shrivel up inside.

I actually have an entire standalone document detailing Rhei and Kutone's relationship! How it started, how Jaci got involved, how successful Rhei and Kutone were, how deeply in love they were. They were too perfect for each other, so they burned up like blazing sawdust. This piece is their theme song. (Also I'm in love with biosphere mkay spare me.)

Regarding Changes

Grading myself here, I think I'm at a B-?

I did good on this fic. Still a good chunk of room for improvement, but despite the fact I want nothing more than to get it out of my face, I like what I've done. Like damn. I wrote a book and I kinda like it.

Things I'd change:

1. Wordiness - I do get too purple in some places, but I also would not sacrifice my prose poetry in certain parts either. 2. Risks - I thought about a lot of these. For instance, Kutone should have slept with Alex, and Seb should have caught them. Again, like Rhei barging in, this would have changed the entire arc of the fic, and I believe that once you cheat, there's no going back to what you were before. Doubt's always going to be a source of conflict in the relationship, and I refuse to believe people like Sebastian or Kutone would ever trust each other again if an affair was on the table. So I shriveled away from that risk too. Sometimes, I gotta let my imagination go there, and see where each rabbit hole takes me, y'know? 3. Omit BS - I'd either cut or fuse a lot of the early chapters. Also, much as I love Alex, a couple of his chapters were really unnecessary. 4. Character arc/Story arc - Is it even there? It needs more! What is even a climax? That was always the one point in the "mapping plot arcs" lessons that I could NEVER understand! More studying necessary.

Any other thoughts? Anything you guys want to ask me about A Drop Echoes before I fully focus on Sunset Stars? Ask me anything, send me your thoughts, theories, conspiracies, cries of mercy, comments or questions to my characters, anything at all, to my lonely inbox.

Also, lastly, but not least, I want to use this moment to thank you all again. For real. Thank you for your love and support, and thank you especially for cheering Kutone on to the end. 

With that...

[andagii-writes]

Some Stats

So while I work on a bunch of things at the same time (like Sunset Stars, like Changing Breaths, like an original short story to hopefully, possibly publish in a magazine), I sometimes pop over to AO3 and fanfiction.net to check on the stats for A Drop Echoes in the Hollow.

Look, the fic’s been done for over a month now, so I don’t expect any new growth stats-wise on either of them.

But, h-holy...

AO3:

It’s been accessed 6,326 times.

344 of you thought the fic was good enough for a “like.”

71 of you liked it enough to bookmark and keep the fic accessible on your page.

Homg.

fanfiction.net:

If I remember right, ff.net takes the grand total of views on each chapter to calculate that stat, not just individual clicks to the fic itself.

So across all 46 chapters of A Drop Echoes, the fic’s got over ten-goddamn-thousand total views.

Anyone know who sleepy fox spirit is, btw? Because that community A Drop Echoes is in is titled “FF’s Greatest Hits,” to which the founder adds stories based on their standard of high quality.

My fic is quality? Ho. M. G, thank you so much.

Now I dunno if it’s just the same person accessing it over and over again (which if it is my goodness you’re precious), but it’s definitely not me, since I only accessed the fic from Live Preview to see if the chapters uploaded properly.

You readers got me here, yo. No matter how many times you accessed the fic on whatever platform you chose, you all did this.

Thank you so damn much.

now give me more validation i am a validation gremlin okay

[andagii-writes]

Star Catcher | Among Sunset Stars

Sebastian, relaxing, broke the awed silence first. “There’s something about him, don’t you think?”

“Something amazing,” Kutone agreed. “Something bright and beautiful.”

Double update!! Didn’t see that coming, did you? Surprise!

These are the last chapters of A Drop Echoes in the Hollow. I’m done! The fic is finished!

I’m crying!

fanfiction.net: Chapter 45 | Chapter 46

Start here on AO3. Start here on fanfiction.net.

Guys! Thank you so, so much for all of your support! Sure I wrote the thing, but you all stuck with it to the end! That’s amazing! 

So tell me more, okay? Send me feedback, prompts, or even direct questions to the characters through my ask box! Ask me anything about my upcoming projects, and I promise I’ll answer to the best of my ability!

Last thing? This is the post you want to like and reblog. It’s got the beginning and ending links. It’s proof the fic is finished. Share it with everyone! That’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you regarding this fic.

And so? Everyone? Thank you so much.

[andagii-writes]

Distant Notes

“...There’s a crawlspace up in the rafters of the main lobby. You follow it up to a room at the very top of the community center... There’s a little shrine there. The wind chimes are the centerpiece, and there’s seasonal offerings to the harvest sprites on the altar. Although, I guess, since my grandfather passed, the sprites use it as their personal shrine to him.”

A good 75% of me is ready to quit fanfiction.net because it’s so heinously broken.

Anyway, the community center’s restored!

fanfiction.net (growls) here.

Chapter 1 on AO3 here. Chapter 1 on fanfiction.net (gnashes teeth) here.

Like and reblog and keep the story alive! Can you guys get me to 350 kudos before I finish the fic?? Will you take the challenge???