a dream of air

Hello yet again!

I'm back on here already because I hadn't had the chance to make this post sooner. I recently posted the first new piece of fanfiction I've written since starting this Patreon, and I wanted to share it here, too.

I'm aware very few if any of you here read my fanfiction, but in case there's somebody who does, or who might be interested in it, I'd like to talk about it from time to time!

So, yes, to those of you who don't know: I write fanfiction. Only really for Higurashi these days, but I've also written for Ace Attorney in the past, and various other things if you go even further back than my current AO3 account. I usually love writing fanfiction, but I've been struggling with inspiration over the last year, so it's been an abnormally long dry spell for me.

a dream of air is a story that came to me very randomly and suddenly, as I wondered how Rena would react if Mion ever called her her old name. The story blossomed from there, as I realised it was a great opportunity to write about the older Mion and Rena we saw in Gou as already being in an established relationship (I personally ship both Mion/Rena and Keiichi/Mion).

It's hard to talk about my creative process with fanfiction, because I kind of go into a trance when I'm writing it :p I've been told my writing is quite poetic in style, which I attribute to starting out writing poetry before I ever wrote fiction (my dad is a poet/author and got me into it). I'm no good at constructing sprawling, plot-centric stories, and I don't really enjoy it, nor have I ever enjoyed trying to make my own characters. For these reasons, I've largely avoided original fiction, as much as I'd love to try my hand at it some day. Instead, my fanfiction is almost another means of analysis for me--I like to use it to explore characters' thoughts and feelings. To dig into the minds of characters made by someone else, and to try to understand them. My absolute favourite thing to write about is the relationships between different characters. In this story, I tried to explore how I felt Mion and Rena's dynamic would change as they age, as well as Rena's relationship with herself. It was surprisingly easy to write after how much I've struggled with inspiration over the last year, and I was so happy to be able to post something new.

If enough people were interested, I would consider doing some podcasts on my creative process with writing fanfiction sometime in the future, as I do for my videos. I don't expect there's much demand for that, though. For now, I just wanted to share this with you all.

That's all for now, I'll see you all in a week or so for the poll for the next video!