And... it is done. Finally! This journey, from when I emailed Lyra asking for permission to write a spin-off, to this day, took one year and five days. It still boggles my mind that I actually finished it. Did it come out as well as I hoped? No. Did I manage to write in everything that I wanted? No. Did I have fun writing it? Hell yea, even if by the end, I was more than ready to move onto something else. All in all, it was quite the experience, and I learnt a lot.
Something that I'm sad to announce, is that there most likely won't be a part 3, like I originally intended.
And now, I will do a bit of a self-critique, since pointing out what went right, isn't as useful, as what went wrong.
It's a circle. The entire idea behind the Prisonic Fairytale series, was to explore the idea of "what if the ShK had a bad ending". And unfortunately, I realized quite late, that a bad ending, the way I wanted it, would mean essentially undoing the "jungle arc" (as I like to call it) of the original. And that doesn't make for something compelling by default since there is nothing new. There was plenty of Sephiroth breaking Aeris' mind in the original. What I hoped would make it fresher, was the way I phrase things, but in hindsight, it wasn't enough.
The release schedule. That was quite a big one, since even though nobody pushed me to release anything, I felt like I had to and that lead to some creative challenges and lower quality.
Even though, I like my current writing style, because it gives me a lot of flexibility, it doesn't really scale with bigger stories. For something, say until 10,000 words, it is probably fine, but for anything bigger, it starts to fall apart, and as a result, quality suffers. For anyone who is interested, the way I write is to create a document, where I have ideas about what I want to happen in the story, and then just write as I go. The problem with that, is that I have a vague idea about what will happen in the story. I know the general direction, but I have found that in most cases, it isn't enough.
So, what about the future? Well, in about two months, there will be a big change to the way I live my life, so I will be busy with adjusting to a new life, if you will. It isn't as dramatic as I make it out to be, but what I am trying to say, is that I will not have a lot of time to write. Also, my next "big project" will not be released as I write it. Instead, I will go back to what I did with "A Flower and a Child" and write the whole thing before I start releasing chapters. This is something that my new workflow will necessitate, but even if it didn't, I would have still done this.
This is somewhat unexpected for me, but I'm actually quite exited to try out a new workflow. Mick Gordon, who made the soundtrack for the new Wolfenstein and Doom games, said something, that I believe is very true. "Change the process, change the outcome". So, I will do just that, and hope that something good will come of it.
All in all, I have no clue when it will come out. It all depends on how life turns out. If you want to be notified when it does come out, you can follow me, I guess.
As for what it will be about, to put it simply, I am still not sure. It will be about FF7, and it will probably be a ship. I am thinking Mafia AU with fantasy elements and cyberpunk sprinkled in there for good measure.
Because I am aware that I will not always be in the mood to work on a singular idea, I will probably try to write two or more stories at a time, while switching between them. Those additional stories will most likely be much smaller in scope. One will be smut, so do not expect anything groundbreaking in terms of storytelling. The ship will also be one that I haven't seen, so I plan on seizing the opportunity. Sephiroth x Sae Nijima from Persona 5. And yes, it will be kinky, with Seph as the Dom and Sae as the sub. It is OOC for her, but I don't really care.
I was planning on compiling a list of all the references that I have made in this fic, but ultimately, I think that it would be more interesting, if I let the reader find them on their own. So, happy hunting.
I am sure that the way I ended this story, won't be to everyone's liking, but this is how envisioned the end, when I started work on this, two years ago, and I am sticking to it.
Finally, before I sign off, I would like to give one last thank you to Lyra_Sanzennine for letting me play in her universe. None of this would exist, had she not written Shevirat ha-Kelim. Before I started work on this series, I had plans to write fan fiction, but I never envisioned myself writing 80k words. Writing this, has given me the courage (there is a difference between courage and confidence) to go much further than I expected to be able to. So, again, thank you Lyra.
This is goodbye from me, for now. I will be back at some point. When? I don't know, time will tell.
I wish, to anyone reading this, good luck in all aspects of life.