The End of an Era

It's not official or anything, but it looks like the end from where I'm typing.

I've been writing fan fiction for a long time now. About a year ago, Ryu became my co-author and helped me create a whole bunch of characters to round out a plot angle that wouldn't have been half as good without some real characters behind it. Given how nuts I went while working on it with his help, I don't think I'd have survived doing it without him.

Now he says it 'feels wrong'. Part of it, I think, is due to the situation between myself and Wendy. Other parts of it seem to involve the discontinuation of the thing the fanfic's based on, the dissent in the community at large (and all the shit he's taken in the name of the series), his own time constraints as they'll be when he restarts college, and one other thing.

There was to be a spin-off. Our characters - our scenario (fine, one I originally created but one that took shape from near as makes no odds its outset with him in the shotgun seat) - it was all supposed to be made into a sort of animated series through a friend of ours who's starting up an animation company. That feels wrong to Ryu as well. I sometimes wonder if the very fact that this might turn out to be a success feels wrong to him.

Whatever, it feels wrong to him and I won't force him into working on it or guilt him or whatever else. It's his right to decide what he wants to do. But it leaves me in a bind because some of the characters are his (Hell, one of the characters started off as him) and I don't want to go in directions he wouldn't approve of, and I don't know how I could avoid that without showing him the work and therefore drawing him back in against his will. And to continue even with the knowledge that he'd be okay with what I do with his characters would come as small comfort - it's a matter of auctorial integrity. Working with established characters where you have all the information at your fingertips (beit on the printed page, a mouse-click away or on the end of a remote control) is one thing; working with other people's brainchildren and having so little to go on is something else. I could warp some of these people so out of line with what Ryu intended that it wouldn't be funny. And they're his, and I don't think that just giving him the credit for having created them is enough. Mainly because I know he wouldn't take it. He's funny that way. And what happens if the spinoff really does take off? There's that whole 'royalties' crap to be sorted out that wouldn't be there if we were still a team.

It all just hurts. Someone who takes great pleasure in flaming my work for no apparent reason once suggested to Ryu that he disassociate himself from all things related to my little fic universe. It feels like he's taken that advice, and it doesn't matter one whit whether it's true or not (though intellectually I know it isn't); it still hurts. The fic was a step towards my ultimate goal of being a writer, and led to a point where I could maybe make a living at all my hard work - and now that part of it's potentially gone for good. That hurts too. And what hurts most of all is that there's all this distance between myself and Ryu that wasn't there before. It's the way things went with Wendy. I couldn't take that happening again.

So basically, another little fairly massive piece of my life is coming apart. There's not a whole lot else left to lose, and I'm wary of holding that too close for fear of losing it too. This is why I was never really close to anyone when I was little - this sort of shit has happened to me before. I thought it was over. I thought I'd finally chosen and, more importantly, been chosen by, people who'd never do that to me, whatever the reasons. Is it so wrong to hope, if not expect, to be done by as I do?

If so many people can give up on me, and the things that make my life, why shouldn't I give up on myself?

Thessaly

A Rose By Any Other Game...

I guess you'd call me a writer. Unpaid, but certainly not unappreciated (at least not in the last two years or so). I've been writing something since I was five or so and was trying to get the story of my short life down on paper. I didn't like it - it wasn't very honest. It only showed the lighter side. But I still did it. I wanted to write things - Stephen King was my idol from the age of about 10 or so - here was a man considered a freak by his peers at his schools, just like me, and look what he went on to do.

I loved creative writing assignments at school. I did poetry for awhile and even got one of my poems published in a citywide student writing magazine. Then I tried my hand at a novel - this was when I was about 16. I had a couple of friends who hung around whatever school printer I was using at the time, waiting avidly for the next chapter or rewrite. I guess that was the point at which the dim dream became a real fire - not only did I want it, I could actually do it.

Look at me now. Author of one of the most popular fanfic series of its kind. Working on a novel. And wondering what all the fuss is about. It's just words on a page - what my mother used to call "living in a fantasy world". I get to play God - isn't that special? Huh. What have I got that a half-million other people on this ball of rock we Homo sapiens call home haven't got more of? Who the hell says I could? Me, once. And since that's supposed to be the only opinion that matters...

Dil wonders what I'd do if I wasn't a writer, or at least actively trying to be. Well, there's plenty of job options for someone of my skills, so that's not an issue. None of them are my dream, but they'd all keep a roof over my head. Mamo-chan stated that, if I really did say that I didn't want to be a writer anymore, he'd be making sure to keep me the hell away from sharp objects. But he also states that my muse wouldn't let me off that easily. And the worst part is, he's right. It would be a fight to the death. Of course, either death would get me what I seem to want tonight.

Why do I bring this up? Mainly because I got hit with an idea this evening, and it's a kicker. But it's one of the projects I was actively trying to give up because of Ryu's unwillingness to further involve himself with it (given his soon-to-be schedule, I can see a little better as to why. Side-note - I'm not likely to see him online for four months - do you have any clue how much that sucks?). I want to work on it so badly it makes my teeth itch, but it brought up why I wanted it so badly. And the only thing I could actively think of was "it makes me too happy" or "it feels too right". Maybe because, bar a few people, it's all I have left. Why don't I want anything?

Something is seriously wrong here. This can't be me talking. Can it?

Thessaly