If I can take a few minutes of your time to be dramatic, I'd like to tell you all a little about a story that never was and never will be: Project Rose.

Project Rose was conceived as I was getting deeper into both Fanfiction and various series and franchises. A love letter to my idealized story, it would be far more than a one-shot, vignette collection or even multi-chapter saga – it would be the cumulative sum of dozens of stories touching on all those different universes that I loved so much. Kingdom Hearts. Final Fantasy. Dragon Ball. Star Wars. Marvel. DC. Bleach. Mass Effect. Pokèmon. TRON. Fallout. Pirates of the Caribbean. Saints Row. And many more besides. All linked together in an expansive collection of stories that ran through an increasingly bizarre timeline and were usually connected by just one character, my main guy who boasted the ridiculous trait of being "Half OC."

All the stories that I currently have out would have nothing to do with the Project, and it's combined length would utterly dwarf any other work I wrote on the side. I started WiaM, B n' H, and TLBitLY as side stories, fun ideas I wanted to see played out and could be distractions from the all the other stories that would comprise the Project. I refered to them for years as the 'extra things'. I even had the very ending planned out; with the irreversible death of my main character, I would thank all of my readers and the owners of all the properties I had used and then bow out of fanfiction forever, as that would be my crowning achievement.

But years did pass, and with them came change. Some of the series that I loved began to sour and ruin themselves while others became more childish in comparison to my evolving tastes. I became a snob and a cynic. This was probably forseeable as one of the first fanfictions that I read was a self-insert Mary-Sue story set in Final Fantasy VII. Back then, I didn't know any better and literally had no basis for what was a good story, so the idea of injecting quite a bit of yourself into a character and going on a complete power trip sounded like the coolest thing ever and would shape my writing for a long time.

A drastic shift in personality and several other issues eventually forced me to seriously look at myself and realize that I was writing shit. Just some of the flimsiest stories that you'd never read all the way through unless your tastes were even worse than my own, and then that would just be spreading the idiocy.

I got better at forming stories in my head, but my ability to translate the awesomeness into actual words is still pretty crap in comparison to the source. Figuring that time was on my side, I let Project Rose sit in my head for nearly a decade after its inception, growing and expanding enough to hopefully save it from mediocrity. I kept this up until just the other day.

I had a cold, so I was either delusional or thinking clearer than usual, but I came to the realization that Project Rose was never going to be made. It was the passion project of a fourteen year old who didn't know shit about writing, and I carried it for so long because it had and does mean so much to me, and giving it up would feel like an abject betrayal of the ideal it had represented to me and mark a humongous failure that I would never shake off. I had shackled myself to the Project, and it was dragging me down, much like a former collaborator who I can genuinely say I am a better person for having cut out of my life.

WiaM, TLBitLY and B n' H have become my main focuses, and they make me happy to write, whereas the Project just felt too huge for me to do alone despite being the only person I trusted to do it. I no longer wanted to write it, but lied to myself about it.

So, nose stuffed up and miserably lying in bed with my shoes on, I very reluctantly came to the conclusion that I would have to admit that I was never going to write it. It was sad, and I did kinda cry for a bit when I felt years of planning just crumble away, even knowing it was the right thing.

But I'm not sad anymore. While the stories will never be written, I still have all the ideas with me and its like nothing has changed, except that the weight of self-imposed responsibility has lifted and I can, at last, stretch and really feel alive. The Project was over, but not forgotten.

I'm sorry (not really) if this was boring or perhaps a tad uncomfortable for you guys, but I felt that, even though none of you even knew about the possibility of Project Rose, it was still going to be something shared between all of us, and as such you deserved to know its fate. To the adventures we might have had!

I am also in the interesting position of no longer having a retirement from fanfiction set in stone. I don't know how long it would have taken me to get there, but I rather think I'll now be writing for much longer and enjoying the ride.

The Prophet has spoken! Hear and heed his words:

"GET HYPE BITCHES!"