General Update + Fractures (Soul Eater Fanfiction)
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve updated any of my blogs so little by little I’ll be posting to each of them this week. It’ll end with the “unveiling” of my newest blog because if you’re having trouble updating, the thing to do is create another site to not use.
Anyway, today I’m going to be talking about “Fractures” an attempt at the 30 Drabble 30 Day Challenge on tumblr that I obviously didn’t complete in 30 Days. You can read it as it is at the moment on [AO3] and [ff.net]. For those that don’t know, this wound up as a story instead of a series of unconnected drabbles about what happens if Maka from Soul Eater is actually a scythe and engaged to Death the Kid because of that. I’m crazy about forced/rushed/accidental marriages so it’s no surprise I had to add that element.
The rest of this post will have quite a few possible spoilers as I talk about where I want the story to go and where I want it to end. Okay, so you’re probably thinking, “What the heck? Why is she including her outline basically on the site?” and the answer is because I can. This is supposed to be a site for WIP’s and that’s what I’m sticking here. If any case, this story causes me much grief. It’s not because I don’t like it or anything like that. I absolutely love the story and I thoroughly enjoy rereading it. The problem is making sure that this story doesn’t become lame or make people mad at me when it ends.
My original plan for this story was for it to just be like snapshots of what’s going on. I mean, it’s a drabble collection and I named it “Fractures,” that seems fairly obvious. In that vein, it was not supposed to end with the loose ends resolved. It was going to be this situation where Maka agrees to go along with the engagement, but still refuses to let go of Soul as her partner while at the same time Death the Kid has made it clear that he loves Maka is not going to let go of her in any way. Meanwhile, Soul somewhat understands that he cannot really be Maka’s partner anymore but still wants to break the engagement. Basically that in the end everyone is too stubborn to show their hands at the table even though the game won’t end when they’re busy trying to break each others’ poker faces.
Now, though, I’m not sure I can get away with this. People seem very interested in my portrayal of the other characters that I chose to use in this story and if I showed everyone’s mind process at the end of the story (which I wanted to end at the engagement party) then there’s no way I’ll be able to end it at 30 chapters.
So, I’m stuck. I really want this to be 30 drabbles/chapters so that I can have a goal that I’m reaching for and feel like it’s complete when I get there. I could do spin-off one shots or something, but that’s kind of an undertaking I’m not sure I want to do. There’s also the matter of the fact that Soul Eater ended when I wasn’t paying attention which means that there are many less people interested in my story in the first place. Do I even have to care in that case about making my readers feel satisfied?
At the moment, I’m taking each drabble step by step, but at some point there’s going to be a huge disconnect probably around Theme 25 where I try to match it up with the ending I want and that’s not really ideal. Adding random themes between Theme 24 and Theme 25 might be unavoidable.
This is the breakdown at the moment (not defined by theme): Liz and Patty are both quite upset that Kid is going to throw them away for Maka as a partner. They don’t have any idea if that means that they’ll even get to stay in the mansion or if they’ll become homeless or what. It’s awful because they feel totally betrayed and hopeless. At some point, Soul will beg Kid not to marry Maka even if he understands that as soulmates, she needs to be Kid’s scythe and not Soul’s meister. Maka feels like she can’t count on anyone after things going awfully with both of her parents. Tsubaki tries to support her, but she agrees with Maka’s parents that Maka is just prolonging people’s pain. Black*Star still doesn’t get what’s going on so he goes to visit Shinigami-sama to get why everything has to happen so quickly and then plot stuff has to happen that connects to the madness stuff in the series which is a problem because the series ended. I didn’t exactly place this within the plot of the main series, but I would prefer to be accurate where I can? Anyway, this means I’ll need to reread the manga (and maybe finish it too which risks killing my interest).
If I can fit it in, Patty will explode at Kid and Black*Star will try to have a talk to Soul. Basically, the story started as a horrible mess of lack of communication and it’s just to keep happening until the end and past the end. No one wants to share their thoughts and information because they’re scared. It will end the day of the party with Maka falsely smiling, Kid happy, Soul determined, Liz bitter, Patty angry, Tsubaki worried, and Black*Star watching from next to Tsubaki trying to assure her that things will work out because they have to.
Haha, do you see now how this story is a total mess at the moment? But it’s a story about messes so I need to just do it well. Which is harder than it sounds.
Thanks for reading. I’d appreciate comments with your thoughts on any of this.
Theme #30: Story: “The End” (Original Fiction) An Update of Sorts + A Lame Short