mistressofmuses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mistressofmuses) wrote2023-03-23 08:19 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2023-03-23 08:19 pm
Entry tags:
Writing!
It hasn't been happening!
Though at least it feels a little more external than internal, currently. (I mean... it's NOT, or at least not completely - I'm still the one deciding not to sit down and really work on anything. But it is less of "everything else is fine, I just don't wanna" and more of "the last couple weeks at work have been nightmarish and my energy is GONE". Do I still need to push through? Yeah, probably. Is it nice to feel like it's not entirely me just dragging ass? Also yeah.)
But I did decide that for the moment, I just want to lean all-in on outlining that "Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity" fic as a much more AU AU, catering solely to my own taste, lol.
It was always going to be an AU, but back when I very first had the idea, it was just going to be canon divergent after Kingdom Hearts II. Basically I was just making my own sequel that went where I wanted it to ship-wise, and playing with stories that weren't ever going to be part of the canon, but otherwise was trying to functionally be canon-compliant up until that point.
The Kingdom Hearts canon is pretty infamous for being bonkers and perfectly happy to retcon itself at every opportunity. And boy has it. So more and more of the things that were integral to my fic are more and more AU anyway... and because the timeline itself is so wonky, it's not even "welp, it matches canon up until the end of KHII". So much of the canon from the first games now has different explanations, in ways that aren't even as cut and dry as "ignore the prequel and sequel material" because they've been retconned so fully into the rest of canon.
So writing it as-is means I'd already have to justify (even if only to myself) all the ways in which this stuff isn't actually canon-compliant anymore (keyblades: how and why; Kairi's connection to Radiant Garden; why drive forms work; Organization XIII, like as a whole, what with the whole "real" Organization XIII stuff; Xehanort, just *all* of that; Xehanort/Ansem's heartless/Ansem-seeker-of-darkness and all THAT nonsense; how nobodies work; where are Aqua/Terra/Ven; etc, etc, etc. IDK, my brain skitters off most of the lore like a frightened prey animal.) So... functionally this would ALL be an AU, beyond just the intended canon divergence.
To be fair, there were a handful of things I'd already changed. A couple incarnations of this fic ago I'd discarded the Disney worlds I'd planned. I'd included them because it meant I did get to include ones that weren't likely to get canon attention, but more than that... because someone had made a FandomSecret - probably more than a damn decade ago, now - about how they hated that KH fic always ignored the Disney part of KH, and only paid attention to the original characters or the Final Fantasy characters. For no good reason, I decided I had to appease this rando and include Disney stuff.
While this was pre-Mari Kondo, eventually I basically decided that those Disney inclusions did not spark joy, and I cut them, only keeping the bare minimum acknowledgement of the worlds from the first couple games and a few interactions in the functional hub world.
(Which was actually more in keeping with my original intention with the fic, which was JUST based on darker un-Disney fairy tales, until that silly secret made me feel guilty about it, lmao.)
Basically anything Disney does Not Spark Joy for me any longer, which makes it a bit of a bummer that I still like this little corner of the Kingdom Hearts sandbox so much.
That was at least a largish part of what made me set the fic aside and say that I was good with being done with it. Things that were canon compliant, or at least not UNcompliant were now AU... and yet not AU in a way that I even enjoyed, because I'd only conceptualized them that way in an attempt to stay in keeping with canon, which felt like double failure!
So I'd thought I was done with the fic, AND YET:
What if I just lean into it being an AU? What if I no longer have to try to keep ANYTHING compliant to any portion of the canon unless I want to? What if I go mad with the power I wield, the ability to write whatever the fuck I want?
I can start this at any point I want to - if I want to write about the characters as young adults instead of mid-teens... I can do that! If I don't want to deal with any of the Disney stuff... I can just utterly ignore it! If I don't want to try and untangle any of the lore that makes my brain glaze over... I won't! If I want to pilfer a handful of interesting ideas from canon... I can just steal those bits!
I don't know that this fic will actually hold my attention, but I'm hoping I can at least ride the wave of interest long enough to get a decent outline done. I've still got a couple other ideas that I'd objectively like to write more, but this is where the motivation is at the moment. If I can get a decent outline done, then I might try to do the thing I'd considered last year, trying to alternate between a chunk of this fic and something else.
I really do want to get back into something that resembles the fairly decent writing schedule I had last year. I made fairly steady progress on things, and I'd like to have that back. Right now, I'm just glad I'm back to feeling like "welp, if I want this stuff written, I better get to it", rather than the couple months I spent feeling more like "idk, do I even care if any of this gets written?"
Though at least it feels a little more external than internal, currently. (I mean... it's NOT, or at least not completely - I'm still the one deciding not to sit down and really work on anything. But it is less of "everything else is fine, I just don't wanna" and more of "the last couple weeks at work have been nightmarish and my energy is GONE". Do I still need to push through? Yeah, probably. Is it nice to feel like it's not entirely me just dragging ass? Also yeah.)
But I did decide that for the moment, I just want to lean all-in on outlining that "Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity" fic as a much more AU AU, catering solely to my own taste, lol.
It was always going to be an AU, but back when I very first had the idea, it was just going to be canon divergent after Kingdom Hearts II. Basically I was just making my own sequel that went where I wanted it to ship-wise, and playing with stories that weren't ever going to be part of the canon, but otherwise was trying to functionally be canon-compliant up until that point.
The Kingdom Hearts canon is pretty infamous for being bonkers and perfectly happy to retcon itself at every opportunity. And boy has it. So more and more of the things that were integral to my fic are more and more AU anyway... and because the timeline itself is so wonky, it's not even "welp, it matches canon up until the end of KHII". So much of the canon from the first games now has different explanations, in ways that aren't even as cut and dry as "ignore the prequel and sequel material" because they've been retconned so fully into the rest of canon.
So writing it as-is means I'd already have to justify (even if only to myself) all the ways in which this stuff isn't actually canon-compliant anymore (keyblades: how and why; Kairi's connection to Radiant Garden; why drive forms work; Organization XIII, like as a whole, what with the whole "real" Organization XIII stuff; Xehanort, just *all* of that; Xehanort/Ansem's heartless/Ansem-seeker-of-darkness and all THAT nonsense; how nobodies work; where are Aqua/Terra/Ven; etc, etc, etc. IDK, my brain skitters off most of the lore like a frightened prey animal.) So... functionally this would ALL be an AU, beyond just the intended canon divergence.
To be fair, there were a handful of things I'd already changed. A couple incarnations of this fic ago I'd discarded the Disney worlds I'd planned. I'd included them because it meant I did get to include ones that weren't likely to get canon attention, but more than that... because someone had made a FandomSecret - probably more than a damn decade ago, now - about how they hated that KH fic always ignored the Disney part of KH, and only paid attention to the original characters or the Final Fantasy characters. For no good reason, I decided I had to appease this rando and include Disney stuff.
While this was pre-Mari Kondo, eventually I basically decided that those Disney inclusions did not spark joy, and I cut them, only keeping the bare minimum acknowledgement of the worlds from the first couple games and a few interactions in the functional hub world.
(Which was actually more in keeping with my original intention with the fic, which was JUST based on darker un-Disney fairy tales, until that silly secret made me feel guilty about it, lmao.)
Basically anything Disney does Not Spark Joy for me any longer, which makes it a bit of a bummer that I still like this little corner of the Kingdom Hearts sandbox so much.
That was at least a largish part of what made me set the fic aside and say that I was good with being done with it. Things that were canon compliant, or at least not UNcompliant were now AU... and yet not AU in a way that I even enjoyed, because I'd only conceptualized them that way in an attempt to stay in keeping with canon, which felt like double failure!
So I'd thought I was done with the fic, AND YET:
What if I just lean into it being an AU? What if I no longer have to try to keep ANYTHING compliant to any portion of the canon unless I want to? What if I go mad with the power I wield, the ability to write whatever the fuck I want?
I can start this at any point I want to - if I want to write about the characters as young adults instead of mid-teens... I can do that! If I don't want to deal with any of the Disney stuff... I can just utterly ignore it! If I don't want to try and untangle any of the lore that makes my brain glaze over... I won't! If I want to pilfer a handful of interesting ideas from canon... I can just steal those bits!
I don't know that this fic will actually hold my attention, but I'm hoping I can at least ride the wave of interest long enough to get a decent outline done. I've still got a couple other ideas that I'd objectively like to write more, but this is where the motivation is at the moment. If I can get a decent outline done, then I might try to do the thing I'd considered last year, trying to alternate between a chunk of this fic and something else.
I really do want to get back into something that resembles the fairly decent writing schedule I had last year. I made fairly steady progress on things, and I'd like to have that back. Right now, I'm just glad I'm back to feeling like "welp, if I want this stuff written, I better get to it", rather than the couple months I spent feeling more like "idk, do I even care if any of this gets written?"
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