I Wish You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year · 2:32pm Dec 25th, 2017
Warning, the following contains spoilers about today’s chapter. Read only if you’ve already caught up with Super.
So, in the same vein that Meeting the family (P8) is the first half of Monsters and Mirrors (P9), A Shadow of the True Self (P10) is actually the first half of Kaiju 3. Originally, this was just going to be an aside before the fight which would cement Applejack’s resolution to put her feelings out in the open more instead of letting them just break free on accident and nearly screwing something up. The more I wrote into this idea, the more I thought that it would be cool if I could work in a way for her to literally face her own fears. It was going great in the Rarity section, and after watching a few episodes of season enders for the Fall 17 anime season (a few of which were waaaaaay too feels heavy for muh heart, see March comes in like a lion, The Ancient Magus bride, and Land of the Lustrous) and I decided that the thing with Rarity wasn’t enough.
I went back and added that bit about needing to see Celestia, and then… then it got dark. It got really dark. The mood when I wrote the final act for this chapter turned so sour so fast that when I wrote it, I switched away from my usual Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood OST to… Bloodborne’s OST, which is saying a lot. Music affects the way I write, and more often than not, FMAB’s stuff really just happens to line up with whatever scene I’m trying to depict most of the time, but nothing in that OST was nearly as dark and visceral and brutal as I needed it to be for this. I’ll change tracks when I feel like it better gets me in the right mood, and this… this went on for a few hours if I remember correctly. The whole BB OST runs for 119 minutes, and It looped before I was done with this scene, so if that’s any indication of how long the dark stuff ran, that’s just how long I needed to be in that mood. Save for five tracks, (Ludwig, Laurence, The Failures, Maria, and Gherman) I don’t usually seek out the BB OST for anything, so this was certainly an extraordinary case. I think the tracks I most often felt like would have been playing in this scene was either Hunter or Dark Beast (fitting names, wouldn’t you say?)
But then we make it to the end, and the resolution makes everything all make sense, and it’s sweet, and I love everything about it. In that particular scene, no piece better fits than Brotherhood ~Postlude~ in my mind. How exactly Applejack ended up here and what happened in that gap between Rarity’s boutique and fighting the Mirror will be addressed as soon as the next chapter starts, and after that… we’ll probably get straight into the fight, since it will be Kaiju 3 proper. If everything goes according to schedule (which it literally does sometimes), then Kaiju 3 will be the first Super chapter of 2018. Considering I wanted to be done with this story half a year ago now, I’m just glad I keep getting the inspiration and drive to continue writing for it. There was a point over the summer where I got worried that I might just pull what I did with that story I took down a while back and ‘finish it’ with a visual novel style bad ending. I never want to put myself in that situation again, so I’ll make damn sure a week doesn’t go by without me writing for at least an hour or two next year. I’ll call that my resolution for 2018 – finish Super. It’s been a very long journey, and along it I know that I have become a significantly better writer, (see the quality of Origin Story to what’s average for Persona and you can just tell how much time has passed.) and the ideas and even other stories this world has spawned for me are always fun to explore. It had it’s rough spots, and even with everything that’s been going on in the world right now, I’d have to say that 2017 has been a very positive year for me. I’m glad to have come this far and hopeful for what the new year will bring in. This is my last blog/chapter post of 2017, and with that said, I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season.
Until Next Time~
– KCZ
