4, 5 and 15 for OAR? Also what is your favorite/least favorite part of the fic?
4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?
I haven’t gotten enough distance yet to be able to reread the whole thing, so this might be a recency effect, but I quite like what Hiruma said to Unsui in the last chapter: “You never minded being a bystander before. Why start now?” (I think this was partially inspired by an earlier comment from SailorFish, so thank you!! if you happen to read this!)
Unsui considers himself a good guy, an altruist. He’s unselfishly dedicated his entire life to someone else. He meditates at the temple. He doesn’t eat meat.
He patches Musashi up when Agon’s been too rough with him.
In this line, Hiruma shows it for what it is. Unsui’s devotion to Agon, his enabling, his passivity, is an evil in its own right, and any other goodness he practices doesn’t make up for it. Hiruma letting just a little bit of pain peek through here, uncharacteristically, serves to show Unsui exactly what effect his bystandering has had on Musashi others.
(To be a little too honest, the fic kind of became a venue for me to meddle in the characters’ lives. I think I’ve always wanted to shake Unsui by the shoulders and tell him to stop playing football for crying out loud, stop living in the one world where he’ll never catch up to Agon, and start developing his own strengths and independence instead! So... thanks for putting up with my soapbox, haha.)
5: What part was hardest to write?
For sure the ending. The last scene, to be specific. I had most of the chapter drafted for a long while, but that last bit was like pulling teeth, and it took me so long to finish it!
Part of it was that I started to get a little over-ambitious with other projects, and couldn’t keep up.
Part of it was angst about closing out on a project that had started to feel like a huge part of me.
And a major part of it was worry that I wouldn’t be able to wrap up all the plot threads correctly, and find a narratively satisfying finish to the ~themes~ or whatever. That I’d disappoint the readers that I’d dragged through so many months, and so many words, only to leave them something unsatisfying and flat.
I’m still not sure if I got it quite right, but if anyone out there is in the same situation, let me just say: I am glad I put out my best effort, instead of dragging my heels (any more than I already did) trying to make it perfect.
15: What did you learn from writing this fic?
Is it too obvious to say: that I was actually capable of writing a fic of this length? Keeping with a long-term project? Consistently putting out chapters (for a loose definition of “consistent”)? I never thought I had it in me before!
Maybe I’ll mention a couple strategies I learned that helped me get through it all.
First, that there’s power in omitting things, too. If it’s boring for you to write, it’s probably going to be boring to read. If I found myself dreading a particular scene, I just skipped right over it, and trusted readers to pick up the details. In this way, tried to avoid mundane moments, and boring transitions, and excess exposition. I hope that it worked!
Second, that things don’t come out perfect, and that’s okay. Write things down, even if it doesn’t sound good in the first draft. There will be plenty of time to revise, but you can’t revise a blank page! And, as I mentioned above, it’s okay to post a chapter even if you don’t think it’s perfect yet. Honestly, if you’re like me, you will probably never think it’s perfect, no matter how much polishing you do.
Also what is your favorite/least favorite part of the fic?
My least favorite parts are both the very beginning and very end T_T. I’ve talked about the last scene already, and how I spent way too long agonizing over it. The beginning, by contrast, I wrote rather hastily, after very little writing practice for the past ~decade, and that wasn’t so hot either. I worry constantly that people won’t be able to make it past the tropey start to the middle, where I’ve finally gotten into my groove. (But I don’t worry enough to go back and rewrite it, apparently!)
My favorite part, hmm. There are a few Hiruma and Sena scenes that I really treasure, but if I had to limit myself, I’d say the Hiruma and Habashira motorcycle punch-out scene is my favorite. I think this is probably the closest I got to showing what was going on in Hiruma’s head: his frustration with the whole situation, and his inability to take it out on either Sena or Agon (for entirely different reasons).
But, more than that, the scene really surprised me!
Some of my best moments came when I took a step back from the intensity of Hiruma and Sena, and asked myself what was going on with everyone else. Multiple times, I was rewarded with entire scenes that just naturally unfolded - from the situation, and from the force of the characters’ personalities. It’s a very different feeling to sitting down and meticulously shaping where you want the plot to go, where you go over it and over it until you’re sick of it.
Because it all comes at once, it feels more like getting to experience it as a reader, and that’s super fun. Other scenes that happened this way included the Juumonji and Sena runaway scene, the Musashi and Hiruma domestic spat that led to bedroom exile, and the Marco and Maria... also domestic spat, I suppose, during the Hakushuu match. Hope it doesn’t sound too woo-y, but these character moments that happened without much input from me were wonderful, because I actually got to enjoy them too! If writing a story is like running a roller coaster, then these parts felt very much like getting to hop on the cart with my readers and enjoy the ride right alongside them.
