Hey all! It's been a while, hasn't it?

So, it's been over two years since I updated this story. I actually still keep the email I used to sign up for this account as a junk email, and to my complete and utter surprise I still get notifications of people favouriting and following The Cat. I was cleaning my room over quarantine, and I found an old journal with a nearly twenty-page outline for this story, alongside my old log-in info. Not going to lie, the nostalgia of the Manage Stories page was a little insane.

I've been writing fanfiction since I was eleven years old. Given that I'm about to turn nineteen this autumn, that means I've been writing for what some may call a "Long-ass time." This story was one of the first things I cooked up after I binged the entirety of the first season of Young Justice on Netflix. It was originally very different: Arabella's name was Alexia, and it involved a plot line where the team went undercover at a random high school and felt very Degrassi. I scrapped that, wrote the original version of The Cat, went on hiatus, scrapped that, and rewrote the whole thing once or twice more until it got where it is today. Looking back, I can see myself growing as a writer. The first five or so chapters of this story burn my eyes, which isn't an insult to anyone who likes them - they have a kind of childish, wholesome charm that feels very nostalgic and fluffy.

I still write fanfiction! Mostly over on Ao3 now (and I am considering crossposting The Cat over there on a burner account, just to see what happens). The culture surrounding fanfiction is so, so different now. In my early days, an OC fanfiction where your character falls in love with someone in canon was the definition of cringe. Everyone bent over backwards to prove their characters weren't self-inserts, and there was a genre of crackfic in YJ specifically making fun of all the teenage girls who shipped their OCs with Robin.

The Cat still haunts me to this day. I haven't watched season three of YJ yet (so no spoilers!), and also I think there either is, or there is going to be a season four? I have no idea if I'll elect to watch those seasons (I was burned terribly by season two. #WallyWestIsInTheSpeedforce2k20), and no shade no tea to Brandon and Greg, but a lot of things I loved about season one were missing in season two. But I still hear new songs that remind me of the characters (The Archer by Taylor Swift was written for Artemis Crock, don't come for me), and I still find myself daydreaming scenes I had been excited to write when I'm in the shower.

I say all this to say: I am using what quarantine-time I have left to revamp The Cat for the umpteenth time. Experience with original fiction has taught me that I work far better when I write something all in one batch, revise, and then release it. So, my current plan is to rewrite all the chapters up to and including Disordered, which was the last one I released, and then complete and release the rest of the fic covering the first season. After that, there are two more arcs outlined by Baby Me, and imagine I will write those separately, and release them as I finish. The fic writer part of my brain is screaming that no one will want to keep up with The Cat without regular, weekly/monthly updates, but I mean, we've come this far, haven't we? And honestly, at this point, the goal isn't to create an everlasting fanwork - it's to purge this story from my brain.

So, I'll see you in probably about a month? Stay safe, stay distanced, wear a fucking mask, and I hope some of the people who were regular readers of this story back in the day see this.