Dreams and Desires
Afterword
*I own nothing and any similarities with any other works are purely coincidental.
UPDATE 10-02-20: All of this is now completely inaccurate. I decided to give up on the sequel idea and just keep writing within the same story, so you should skip this chapter if you are still actively reading. Just think of it as a really long, catch-up authors note. I stand by most of what's written here, but its ultimate value has been severely diminished. Reading this will give you a far greater insight into me as a person, as well as my general writing process and style, but the majority of it has become pretty redundant now that I've written more stuff. Feel free to drop by if you ever run out of new chapters to read, but otherwise you should probably ignore this messy rant.
So many of you may have noticed that I didn't leave any author's notes on the last chapter. And Chapter 15 was also pretty bare-bones in that regard too. Well, that's because the story is finished. I'm sorry if I didn't make it abundantly clear, but yeah, that was the end. So I am making this last update in order to clear a few things up. Some of what I talk about will seem pertinent and relevant to the story, other stuff will seem random and arbitrary. This is just kind of a long and nonsensical rant, so here is the TL;DR.
Don't worry, there will probably be a sequel.
Yes, I know that practically nothing is resolved with the ending. I didn't answer what happened to Kai or Jay, and the same is true in regards to Master Wu, who has been conspicuously absent since Chapter 11. As annoying as that may be, I chose to do it in part to fit with the whole tragedy aspect I was going for. My plan was to kill them all off, and I was debating if Harumi should still be manipulating Lloyd or not, but I chickened out. It was just way too dark, and Llorumi is quite possibly my absolute favorite Ninjago ship, so I just had to give you all a romantic and cheery ending. Yay!
Writing romantic fluff was a nightmare for me though. Writing tragedy and heartbreak is easy, but love just isn't for some reason. I don't know why, I guess being sad and angry is far more personally relatable. But yeah, that chapter was mentally draining to write, so I hope you all liked it.
Back to what I was saying. It's kind of strange, but I personally think that leaving all of this unresolved is almost more tragic than just killing them off, because now you don't get any sort of closure with any other characters. You get to see that with Lloyd and Harumi, but nobody else gets any last words; it can't be a truly happy or tragic ending. That whole paradoxical situation should leave you all with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction and worry, which I think is quite fitting for a tragedy. You might dislike it, but at the end of the day, it's my story.
I also think that it helps enforce the fact that, although Lloyd may have found his love again, he is somehow more alone than before. He may have been distant from his friends earlier, but there really is no going back for Lloyd now. He's made up his mind, and the damage has been done. So leaving out everyone else just makes it clear how they aren't a part of his life. It's a far more nuanced and complex ending than you might initially think, which is probably due to the fact that I made it rather sexual and promiscuous. Most of my creative writing and structural choices seem to just get sort of lost in translation, which I guess is fair. I think I'm still safe with the current rating, but I have been really skirting the line between teen and mature for the entire fanfiction. If anyone thinks I should change the rating, or if any of you think I should swap out either of the categories, let me know. I think it should be fine on both fronts, but feedback, whether it be positive or negative, is always welcome. Just please be constructive and not mean. Thanks.
Regardless, I have some more explaining to do in regards to Harumi specifically. I had been setting up that twist since the very beginning, and I'm very curious to know what you all thought. Did anybody out there see it coming? I tried to be very subtle with my hints, but the constant use of the gender-neutral pronoun "they" may have been a giveaway. And saying that the Master of Dreams was not a new threat in Chapter 1 may have also made it obvious, but I just don't know.
I'm guessing that many of you probably thought the ending seemed a little forced romantically, but I do have an alibi. My excuse in that regard is that you barely get to see Harumi's actual thoughts throughout the story, so those conflicted emotions were simply hidden. The story is written in my own really chaotic version of third-person omniscient, and while it's told from her perspective pretty frequently within the dream sequences, the moments are otherwise few and far between. Obviously that's excluding Chapters 15 and 16, where you get to see her thoughts pretty often.
I tend to lean towards writing everything from Lloyd's perspective, as I think I understand his character better than any of the others, but I tried my best to share the spotlight throughout the story. I began the story focusing on Nya and Zane, but Jay sort of took over towards the end. Kai was used pretty sparingly, and Cole got shafted. Though, I guess Cole getting a lack of attention is pretty accurate to the actual show. I'm joking of course.
I really am sorry to all of you Cole fans out there, but I just don't know how to write him yet. I don't think I have a good grasp on his character, and I have trouble fitting the writing to his personality. Kai and Jay are by far the easiest to write dialogue for in my opinion since they are very dynamic and pretty loud characters. Kai is the hothead and Jay is the scared joker. They have quite a bit of overlap though, and I find myself writing the pair very similarly. I also find Zane to be pretty easy to write dialogue for as well. Zane just always speaks very matter of factually, and I can write that quite well. I completely forgot about including Pixal, so sorry Pixane fans. I really couldn't find a way to include her, and if I'm being honest, I wanted so badly to just write about Lloyd for the whole story. Nearly everything after Chapter 2 that involved the other ninja felt like a chore and filler for me to write, excluding their final confrontation with Lloyd. Writing Lloyd is just so much more enjoyable for me, I'm not sure why. I tried my best to write Nya as one of the focus characters of the story, and I guess if you look at it from solely her perspective, it is definitely a tragedy. I actually originally wanted to have Nya fall in love with Lloyd, and just start a whole bunch of ugly drama between the characters. You can see a bit of that in the first few chapters, where Jay is worried about how protective Nya is being of Lloyd, but I eventually abandoned the idea. I am still considering trying out that idea for the sequel, so if any of you want to see that chaotic mess unfold, let me know. I probably won't though, but then again, I don't know what I'm going to write. I kind of want to make an OC villain as the new Master of Wind, but otherwise I have no ideas yet.
Another thing that I just wanted to make abundantly clear is that I haven't actually mentioned if the characters are still LEGOs or not. Most of my illustrations are drawn in that style, but that's only because I suck at drawing realistically. People are just so hard for me to draw, especially the lips, ears, and noses. I suppose it's up to interpretation if they they look like regular humans or not. I like to think of it that way and that's generally how I've written the characters but I've been pretty careful to avoid mentioning noses, ears, and fingers. Of course I do not want to get into how or why LEGO minifigures could have sex, that's just gross.
In case anyone is wondering I only began writing this whole story for one extremely selfish reason. It was just because I ran out of Llorumi fics that I wanted to read, so I decided I might as well write my own. Well I guess I also had had the concept for the Elemental Master of Dreams floating around in my head for a few months, so I wanted to try it out in writing. But yeah, this entire story was born from nothing more than just me not having enough Llorumi in my life.
However, as the story progressed I really began using it to help me cope with how terrible the world is. I am not entirely sure if it is enough to be qualified as depression, but I have been really moody and sad lately. It's not all the time, but I can get stuck for a while feeling lonely and nihilistic. One of my other hobbies is video editing but I've just been feeling so much burnout lately. I've lost interest in so many of my normal activities that I have resorted to writing and drawing, which I never thought would happen in a million years. But I guess writing this story has allowed me to get out my darkest and most insidious thoughts in a very healthy manner, so that's been nice.
I'm definitely not going to start writing the sequel right away though; the pace I've been writing at is unsustainable. I don't know how long it will be before I start work on the sequel, it could be a few weeks or a few months. And I'll probably try a few different things before I go back to this timeline. I've had another story idea for like a week now that I've desperately wanted to start writing, so at the very least you all can expect a preview of that coming very soon. I'll probably write the first chapter though, previews are stupid. But yeah, my uploading schedule will probably be a lot more sporadic going forward. Or it might not, I really don't know.
Some of you may have noticed a distinct lack of original characters in my story. Well, if that's something you want to see a lot of, then I'm sorry. That's just not how I write fanfiction, because I seem to always try to keep everything in canon as much as I can. I stretch a few details considerably, like how Lloyd conveniently got his full powers back despite the fact that the Golden Armor was weakened, and how he gained access to all of his Oni powers despite being only 1/8 Oni, but it's my story; I can stretch the truth as much or as little as I want. But yeah, you shouldn't expect a whole ton of OCs. I want my writing to seem authentic and similar enough to the source material.
Technically, I actually managed to sneak in a single OC in Chapter 16. Final chapter of the story, and it's just a passing reference. Impressive right? Unless I'm forgetting someone, I think Dom, the former Master of Dreams, was the only character that I actually invented. The whole concept for the Master of Dreams was my idea, but I just repurposed Harumi to be the main antagonist. Also if any of you were wondering, the name Dom is a little nod to the film Inception. I will admit that the concept for an idea planted in someone's mind to change their behavior using dreams was also borrowed kind of from Inception, but I think it's definitely different enough. The other powers are entirely unique in their own right, so I'm content with the concept I created. Obviously it is entirely possible that someone else may have thought of every new concept I had before I did, which is why I chose to put that obnoxious disclaimer on every chapter. Because I really did think of this all on my own, even if it may have been inspired by Inception. There's still a lot of room to explore those powers further in the potential sequel, such as Harumi's True Potential as well as her learning Spinjitzu and Airjitzu. And I may go back to that idea of her combining her powers with Lloyd to make dreams come true, so keep that in mind I guess.
Honestly this entire story has been a roller-coaster for me as well as you, as I had no idea how it would end. I initially planned on Harumi revealing her identity to stop Lloyd from killing one of the ninja, but then I made Lloyd more conflicted and suicidal. I think the reveal ended up better that way, since she did it smugly and begrudgingly. The image I was visualizing when writing that scene was similar to when Frodo caught Gollum in the Two Towers; how he was furiously holding Sting up against his neck. Frodo also does the same sort of thing to Sam when they're in Osgiliath, near the end of the film. So yeah, if you've seen that film, try to imagine them in the same sort of position, only it would be Lloyd threatening Harumi with the Sword of Sanctuary. Although I guess that doesn't really matter that much, however you interpreted and visualized the scene is perfectly fine.
As I was saying, the only thing I had planned for the story was that reveal; everything else just came to me at some point and then I wrote it down. The dream sequences were easier to plan, since I was mostly just bending the source material, but other than that, I had no idea what I was doing. Writing in that way goes against all the advice I've ever been given for making a story, but I did it. I think it probably led to a lot of sudden shifts throughout the story; like I'm betting there were definitely parts where the story went in directions you didn't expect. I wish I had spent more time setting up Lloyd's depression before he was abducted, but honestly, I don't think you needed much more of a setup. Lloyd's stuck thinking about Harumi is about all you needed to hear, although obviously watching the show through Hunted was also necessary. Which is why I put it in the description, how smart of me.
If you managed to read through this garbled mess, then you probably have more patience than I do. I hope that I'll see all of you again with whatever my next story is, but even if I don't, thanks for hearing me out.
Please review the fanfic though, my mental state and general well being depends on it
Okay that may be an exaggeration
But still
Thanks and goodbye for now