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osrasaskblog · 3 years

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Well, guys.

I really hoped that I wasn't going to make this post, but I'm afraid it needs to be done.

I started writing Opal, Sapphire, Ruby, and STEVEN! in 2016, when I was in high school. I loved the characters of Opal and Ruby and Sapphire and I wanted to see more of them than what was in the show. I was curious, what would it be like if they had swapped places with Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl? How would those different personalities work together? How different would things be if they were the characters that we followed? I would have loved to read a fic of it.

And then I figured, well, hey, why don’t I write a fic of it?

So I took to my little writing tablet and started up my new story. And I had so much fun doing it. I loved writing Ruby, who was a spitfire but also had a gentle heart. I loved writing Sapphire, who was cool and composed but always warmed up to her friends, especially Steven. I loved writing Opal, who was just so many things at once—a calm leader, but also a goofball, a wise war hero but also a cool aunt-like figure. Most of all I loved to write Steven, who was just so funny, a goofy and adorable kid who was also shouldering the responsibility of a world on his shoulders.

It was so relaxing to write these little episodic chapters, especially as the quiet kid in class who could never stay too far from her works-in-progress. I knew back then that I was going to be a writer someday, because I had this deep, passionate need to create stories and characters. But without an original idea of my own yet, I loved writing fanfiction. I think why I love to write fanfiction so much is because even though there’s something already there, I’m taking it and reforming it. I guess it’s kind of like those “finish this picture” pages in coloring books. There’s something already there, but you finish it—you decide what it will be. Is this pretentious? Maybe. I’m not always great with words, ironically.

So I wrote all these short chapters with this new set of characters, and I thought, I’m going to change things up. I didn’t just want it to be different characters saying and doing the exact same thing as the original story—I didn’t want to copy-paste the episodes scripts and use the “replace” tool to change the names. I came up with new backstories for the Crystal Gems. I looked at the original episodes and thought of how I could tweak them, mix them up a little bit.

The chapters started to get longer and longer because of this, and my own writing style developing a lot. Instead of just no-beta keyboard smashing between my classes, I actually sat down and wrote things out, put in more descriptions, more dialogue, etc. And for a really long time I thought that the same-but-different format of the story was a good thing. I thought it was fun to write new characters in new situations, while also having that familiarity—many reviewers would comment things like “I can’t wait to see how they’ll react to X!” or “I can’t wait until we get to [insert episode here]!” That was originally the whole point of the story—different situations, same characters.

I enjoy reading through my work sometimes. Though, I’ve said to several people that I avoid the first chapters of OSRAS because I just think my work was so subpar back then. And again, I liked the same-but-different story I had written. It was fun, it was simple.

Then things started to get different. When? Well, I can’t really pinpoint it, but if I had to guess:

I recall, though, as I was writing “The Ocean” (which was posted around the same time as the “Bismuth” episode) that something was off. Even though I enjoyed writing the fic, this chapter was my first curveball—because in the show, “Mirror Gem/Ocean Gem” is a gamechanger. It changes everything that had been established already, introduced a new character, and set a different tone from the series so far. And in writing this arc for OSRAS, I realized that I…didn’t really have much to offer.

The episodes were very Steven-and-Lapis centric. The Crystal Gems weren’t involved very much. So…what was really the point of writing it? Because the readers already know what’s going to happen. Even back then I looked at the chapters I wrote and thought, this doesn’t have that same-but-different appeal. It’s just the same. What about Steven talking to Lapis in the whirlpool was different from him talking to her atop the pillar of water?

Afterwards, the show started getting into its “everything is changing” point in Season 3. Soon after “Bismuth” came “Back to the Moon,” where we find out Rose shattered Pink Diamond. This was a big “oh crap” moment. Finding out that there was a Pink Diamond was a big “oh crap” moment, because this was when the fandom was at its peak of theorizing.

And even though I kept writing the fic, I was trying to figure out how I was going to tackle this. Because there was no way to get that shock into the fic. It would just be Steven reacting to something the readers already knew. No shock. No drama. Just marking stuff off the checklist. It happened in the show, so it would happen in the fic.

The same-but-different appeal didn’t seem like that anymore. It seemed more like a problem than anything. Like I said, reviewers often said stuff like “I can’t wait for this episode!” But one or two did say that they just didn’t feel the same way—that they couldn’t really see a point in writing a fic that was basically just the original series with a few minor tweaks. I don’t like brushing off criticism, in fact I love criticism, but to this I originally just shrugged and said, “Well, that’s what the fic is. Don’t like, don’t read, I guess.”

Now the problem was that I didn’t like it. I found some reprieve when I wrote chapters like “The Common Soldier,” which delved into the entirely-different backstory of Ruby, but then there was “The Test,” “The Invasion,” and “The Jailbreak.” And “The Jailbreak” was like…the point of the whole fic. The big thing that the chapters were leading up to, where Opal would be “revealed” as a fusion and Pearl and Amethyst would make their debut. And again, same-but-different. The readers were seeing what it would be like if they were the fusion instead of Ruby and Sapphire, and it’s fun, right? They’re not expecting to be shocked, they were reading for the “what if”, right? The biggest curveball I threw in that chapter was having Peridot fuse with Lapis instead of Jasper…which I decided to do when I began writing the chapter, so I scurried to figure out where I was going to go with it.

I decided that in the next fic (Twists & Turns) I would decide to amp up the differences. But I stumbled. “The Shock”, ironically, was not a shock. Opal and Steven find the Cluster just like how he and Garnet did. Then “The Mistake”, where even though the reason for Opal and Ruby’s fight was different, there was always going to be a fight. I struggled to find this balance between the familiarity and the need for something different. I figured, yeah, there’s still the desire to see new characters react to the same situations, but what else? That was it.

To try and remedy this problem, I started planning my chapters ahead instead of writing by the seat of my pants like I was. I started getting more and more into making things different. I tried to figure out how to make Chrysocolla different than Malachite, and came up with a “peaceful” resolution as opposed to the action-packed one. I would hit the same story beats, but I thought, the pull will be the different context and motivations.

But…the original series kept going, and we all know how it went. Rose turned out to be Pink Diamond. The Crystal Gems go to Homeworld to confront White Diamond. Steven finally changes her mind. And more than that, all the character arcs are wrapped up. Garnet embraces herself as a fusion, Amethyst finds her self-worth, Pearl decides to fight for herself rather than anyone else, etc, etc. A lot of stuff that just would not carry over to OSRAS. Like, how would I even try to recreate Change Your Mind??? How on earth would I find a way to write the Rose-is-Pink reveal without the readers going yeah, yeah, we know?

So I started to come up with a whole new thing. Or at least, I tried. This is where Star came from. Something completely new, completely original, to set the fic apart from the original series. I knew that I needed to create an ending for the story—and more than that, the characters. Opal, Sapphire, and Ruby all have their own individual stories that would need to be wrapped up.

But all the ideas that I had for the finale of the fic were vague and blurry. Which was really bad, because writing a story when you don’t know how it’s going to end is…very stressful. I realized eventually that I had made a very hellish situation for myself.

I wanted to write a new, original story. But the first ~36 chapters were just an adaptation of the original series.

I feel so awful right now because I feel like I lied to so many of my followers so many times. Some asked if Spinel was going to appear, and I said I think I found a way for her to fit in just fine…and then I dropped that whole idea, and thus lost a place for Spinel. Sometimes I said “I have a plan for how this will work out” when what I meant was “I plan to have a plan for how this will work out.”

So, to summarize:

1. The original series started to become so lore-heavy that a “same story, different characters” fic was just not going to work.

2. Even so, that was what the fic had been for a very large time. To write a new and original story, I would still have to work with what I had already done. Like the “finish the picture” page in the coloring book was like 99% done and I had very little space to make something creative.

3. Because I no longer wanted to do a same-but-different story, I had to let go of the show’s original storyline and come up with my own…while I was already writing the story. Again, I had no ending for the story even though I was posting chapters for it as often as I could.

And I kept doing this for…years. Because I refused to let this fic go. I felt such an attachment to Opal, Ruby, and Sapphire and their stories that I had come up for them. The first fic was 259,004 words long. And Twists & Turns? 305,428. I couldn’t just throw that much work away, I had to salvage it. And more than anything, I still had so many follows, favorites, and bookmarks, readers leaving me reviews, people sending me asks into my inbox. When I went through rough times in my life and was slow on updates, so many readers comforted me, telling me it was okay. And I had people tell me that this fic was…important to them. That it made them happy when they were in rough times.

But the truth was…I just didn’t like this fic anymore.

Sometimes I found myself enjoying it still. Writing Jasper’s redemption arc was truly fun for me, one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. I love writing the comedy style of Steven Universe. I loved writing these characters and their interactions. And yeah, sometimes I would still re-read some of the earlier chapters and enjoy doing so.

But…

Every time I post up a new chapter, I just wish it was something else. Even if I loved Jasper’s redemption arc, Lapis and Peridot’s unique relationship, the fight between Steven and the Crystal Gems, it was like watching good scenes from a bad movie for me. Like yeah, this is nice, and I like it, but when I looked at the bigger picture, I was just disappointed. It felt like the original vision, a very simple and straightforward SU but Opal, Ruby, and Sapphire instead, had just…chained it down. I wanted to be creative, make a story that was original, but each chapter I’ve been posting lately just feels like that 99%-done picture.

And all those ideas for the finale just—never came together. Some became pretty clear. There were things that I came up with that I thought, Oh, that’d be so COOL! But because of what the fic already was, it would have never worked. It would’ve broken the rules of the setting, or it would have come out of nowhere with no buildup. I had a whole lot of puzzle pieces that wouldn’t fit together. The time that I put aside to try and figure this out were just hellish. I have spent hours staring up at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to end this story, and each and every time I’ve walked away with no progress and more stress than I can handle.

I can’t recall what all detail I’ve gone into, but I know I’ve told readers before that life has been stressful for me as of late. Not just with work and school, which are taking huge bites out of my time, but health issues and family issues, too. And it feels so stupid, to say that writing a fic for a children’s TV show was another problem, but the truth was that it was. I already had/have so many things weighing me down and causing me anxiety, and on top of all of them I’ve been putting time aside almost every day to worry about this story.

I’m writing this now after three hours trying to find a way to wrap up this fic and coming up with nothing. The only solution that I can find now, to just stick with the original storyline set up by the show, doesn’t feel like a solution at all. It would still have that huge, glaring problem: I have already seen this, so why should I read it? And probably a large part of that has to do with Steven being the protagonist, and already establishing that he’s going through an arc dealing with trauma and identity issues…just like the show did. Not adding anything new.

On top of the lack of a proper solution, though, the idea of writing three more seasons’ worth of OSRAS fills me with dread. This story, which has no set ending or resolution to its plot (let alone its character arcs), could take me years to finish in that absolutely unsatisfying manner I mentioned. That’s years of writing a story that I only find occasional joy in. Years of dedication to something that I just regret at this point.

So, I guess you figure by now that this is a bit of a farewell. And just writing that makes me feel so shitty. I feel like I’m about to cry now, because even though I’m committing to this decision, and even though I’m feeling relief already, I am wracked with guilt. I feel as though I’m letting so many people down. After months and months of “Sorry for the wait, promise more chapters are coming!” and months and months of “I promise we’re getting to X soon!” now I’m taking that all back. And again, I’ve had people tell me how much this fic means to them. I imagine that some people are going to be reading this, and they’re going to be hurt and angry and betrayed, and I honestly can’t blame them. Not just because I know firsthand how frustrating it is to have a story I really love be discontinued, but because I feel as though I’ve lied to my readers.

Unfortunately, as I said, I’m committing to this. This is just the only solution that I can find to this problem that’s been weighing down on me for years now. OSRAS is always going to mean something to me, because like I said, I did find joy in the characters and the interactions, the dialogue that I came up with. I wrote this story for five years. But the little joys weren’t enough to outweigh the stress. Ideally I want to say something like But maybe one day I’ll figure out a proper ending, but I can’t promise something like that.

WITH ALL THAT BEING SAID...

I’m attempting to work on a revamp at the moment. I still very much like the idea of a swapfic, but I’m going to need to make it from the ground-up. Maybe I’ll make Connie the same character; maybe I’ll put it in a different setting. I still have ideas for Ruby’s story as the last of her kind, and Opal’s unique situation of a fusion by necessity. Like I said, I did have some thoughts for how these could have been resolved, but with the current state of the fic, they wouldn’t be possible.

I’m going to leave the fics up, promise I won’t be deleting them. If anyone wants to ask questions, my inbox is open, but I can’t promise immediate answers. And if anyone wants to message me about plans I did have for the fic, feel free to do so, but I won’t be posting them publicly on the blog. I may revisit them if I ever go for a revamp. And some things I’m going to keep to myself, because they’re ideas that have a stronger chance of being revisited and I’d rather keep them secret.

So this is coming to be about 3,000 words now. And maybe 3,000 words is way too much for a “I’m discontinuing the fic” post, and maybe this is 3,000 words of pure overdramatic whining, but I wanted to give a full explanation here for why I’ve made this decision.

The second-to-last thing I wanted to say is that I’m sincerely sorry to anyone who feels hurt by this. Like I said, maybe one day I’ll try this again after all, but as-is, the state of OSRAS feels like a mess that I can’t fix. Plus I’m going to be a little selfish and do what’s going to relieve me of this stress. All I can say is that I am positive that if I decided to continue this fic, it would have been obvious in the writing that I’d lost my passion for it.

The last thing I wanted to say is a giant THANK YOU to all my readers and followers over the years. Even if OSRAS is over, I want each and every one of you to know that all your reviews, favorites, and bookmarks always made my day a little better. I only hope that if/when I get around to the revamp, it will be so much better than OSRAS was.

So, this is goodbye to OSRAS for now. Again, my sincerest apologies, and my sincerest thanks.

Sincerely, myself, Opal, Sapphire, Ruby, and Steven

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