NaNoWriMo 2015

[sherryillk]

How long has it been since I last wrote anything in my LJ? A year? Two? After making the transition to AO3 as my center of fanfic reading, I haven't been using LJ at all... Instead, the stuff I usually would write about in my LJ, I would tweet about. Or maybe write a FB post if I needed something longer. And the longer I stayed away from LJ, the harder it was to come back.

But I've gone through a ton of emotions today and I need to decompress somehow. A tweet isn't going to cut it. (I tried.) My FB post was too brief and I was hesitant to go in depth about my fannish ways. So here I am, back at my LJ.

So, I'm writing a Kuroko no Basket fanfic. It's Kise/Kuroko. I haven't finished the manga. I'm even more behind in the anime. I only restarted KnB only a month ago. It was a stupid idea for me to be writing anything relating to Kuroko no Basket. But outside of a self-indulgent Ace of the Diamond fanfic that I've been knocking around in my head, the idea for a Kaijou based Kise/Kuroko alternative universe story was the thing that I wanted to write the most.

Even though I haven't finished the manga, or the anime, I've read a ton of Kise/Kuroko fanfics. Most are rather unsatisfying. In fact, I don't think I've read anything that was really all that good. Some were decent, some were okay, but nothing has made me fall in love with the story or the pairing. I tend to like longer stories so finding a well-written long fic is hard to come by in most randoms. This has made me pretty unsatisfied because I haven't read the story I've wanted to read. Instead, I've been reading doujinshi (so much doujinshi!!!) and that has been satisfying my hunger for all things Kise/Kuroko.

Along my trawls, I can across the scanlations of Victorious Kiss. It's basically Kaijou Kikuro. It gave me the idea -- how do they get there? Can I get them to fall in love while at Kaijou together? Can I make it more realistic (Victorious Kiss is about how Kise and Kuroko kiss at every game they play to bolster their confidence)? At the time, I didn't realize it was a whole freaking series.

When I did, I found a sort of scanlation of the next part of the series, Victorious Kiss 2Q. It was really a rough draft that the author put on Pixiv. Pixiv is a godsend for doujinshi lovers. So much pretty artwork, so many doujinshi! But though she had the rough draft up, I'm pretty sure it wasn't the whole story. And from there I found HT (halftime?), 3Q, 4Q, and even FT (I think it's Time Final, when really it should be FT or just F). None of those were ever scanlated or translated. And on Pixiv, none of what she puts online is whole doujinshi because she wants you to buy them.

And on a whim, I found Victorious Kiss 3Q on Bay. I bought it. It was sent from Mexico so it took like a month to get to me. I only got it today so I hadn't read it until today. I tried a bit on Pixiv but like I said, it wasn't the whole thing. And because I was already buying 3Q, I figured I would also get 4Q and HT too. I couldn't find FT anywhere in stock so I had to give up on it. I found 4Q and HT on a different site, and even though they were expensive, I bought them. Fast forward a week later to me finding out 4Q was actually out of stock and I was getting a refund. I was so depressed. I'm still so freaking depressed! 4Q! The next part of the story! URG! I want it so badly, I'm almost willing to pay a crazy amount of money for it. Perhaps that's why when I found TF today, I actually did pay a crazy amount of money for it! OTL

Anyway, HT also managed to arrive today despite being sent only a week ago. Damn, shipping from Japan is so much faster than shipping from Mexico! o.O

HT was short, basically an interlude like word "halftime" suggests. But 3Q was a monster. It's like a book. And ugh, it was so, so good. So well written! So nicely thought out! It made perfect sense! It was everything I wanted to do and more! It's the story of how Kuroko and Kise end up at Kaijou together and how they fell in love! It was cute! It was funny! It was heartbreaking and sad. Reading it was a delight and yet, it was also so very painful because I knew I could NEVER write a story as good as that. And worse, now that I've read it, I'm going to have to be extra paranoid about not plagiarizing any of it too. So that perfect reason why Kuroko decided to go to Kaijou? Can't use it even though after reading 3Q I CAN'T IMAGINE IT BEING ANY OTHER WAY. Of course that's what changes his mind! It made perfect sense!

So even though I am absolutely IN LOVE with 3Q, and I totally want to translate it for real, and maybe even scanlate it myself even though I don't know how to edit manga (is it really that hard...???), I'm also absolutely devastated because my NaNoWriMo story just pales in comparison. It's like finding out everything you ever wanted to do was already done. All the wind has been taken out of my sails. I could just feel my determination and will to write being sapped out of me. It was awful.

So that's how I spent my night.

But I can't just give up on NaNoWriMo less than a week in. That's freaking insane. I made it to 30K last year before my Vegas vacation that completely derailed my progress. I only just managed to get to 11K today. It's been a week start this year. And now this happened. It's really awful...

But I kept thinking about it. About my story, and what I wanted to write in the first place. A somewhat realistic story about Kise falling in love with Kuroko in Teikou, confessing, having Kuroko also have feelings for Kise and letting that be the reason why he chose to go to Kaijou. Both of them grappling with the realities of a same sex love and what that meant. I don't want a self-aware bisexual Kise to make it easy on me. I don't want a typical Kuroko uke. And I wanted to address that ever looming Aomine issue and the later insecurities that Kagami will inspire in Kise. KnB is all about fate -- the Generation of Miracles all meeting together in middle school and then scattering, Kuroko meeting Kagami, a person who could have been a member of the Generation of Miracles but wasn't and them teaming up together to bring the members of the Generation of Miracles back to their senses and back to loving basketball. My fanfic was going to be about defying fate, making their own destiny.That's the story I want to write.

Because if Kise had fallen in love with Kuroko at Teikou, and made it known to him, and Kuroko is convinced enough to go to Kaijou, then the canonic fate that KnB had set has been ruined. How does that play out for Kise and Kuroko? For Aomine and the other members of the Generation of Miracles? Or for Seirin and Kagami? I still want to explore that possibility in my own story.

And for the first time this week, I really want to write. I still don't think my story will be as good as 3Q, and I kinda wish I had decided to read it after November had ended, but my story is different. I want to do different things. I don't know if I can, but I want to try.

Tonight's been kinda crazy in my mind. But I think I'm in a good place now. Just the shock of how perfect 3Q is was enough to rock my foundation a bit... The really scary part? I know my Japanese skills have deteriorated from a few years ago. And there's still a ton of kanji I don't know. I looked up a lot of them but I glossed through a lot too. But even though I didn't really understood 100% of the story, I still was able to fall completely in love with it. I enjoyed it way too much for something I didn't have complete understanding of.

That being said, I did understand most of it. Nuances might have been lost on me but it's not like I was reading it totally confused for an entire page. But it has cemented this circle, this author completely in my mind. I love her. I love her stories. I want to read more. I love her portrayal of Kise. It's my goal now to be able to write a Kise who is as good as hers. Ah, I wished I could read all of her manga without bankrupting me... But right now I'll just settle for 4Q. And I do kinda still want 2Q in it's entirety. I mean, I have the first one as a scanlation but if I manage to get 4Q and 2Q, I'm probably going to want to finish the collection... But, who knows when I'll see 4Q and 2Q for sale? Ugh, the uncertainty kills me...