Happy New Yea—

Hang on a second! WE'RE NOT DONE YET!

Devil's Emergence and Princess-Officer Investigations seem to have stalled — Devil's Emergence because I struggle to make myself draw/design levels/reboot into Windows to write music, and Princess-Officer Investigations because the artists are working on higher-priority (and probably paid) projects. That means that I haven't completed a major project since August, when I redesigned this very website. Have I really just been sitting idle, making no progress on anything for a quarter of a year? That simply won't do! This year can't be over until I can prove that I can still finish projects!

But if I can't draw, do level design, compose, or manage people, then what can I do? Writing seems to come pretty easily for me, so perhaps I could do writing work for both games? Unfortunately, Devil's Emergence needs a lot more than just writing to be released, and Princess-Officer Investigations's writing is already finished! I could work on Laria, but would anyone aside from me care about some half-working Rust clone with an interpreter that's slower than CPython? Besides, what would "completing" Laria even look like? Is there nothing I can do?

Not all hope is lost, though. I did complete one other major project this year: Soul, a fanfic written for the Welcome to Gensokyo fanzine. It was a little corny, but it wasn't that bad, honestly. Actually, it was kind of fun to write, and I've always wanted to try delving further into narrative writing...

At the end of October, the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place: a friend of mine showed me an ancient a very new and very relevant anime series, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, along with its associated movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. Right from the start, a certain character grabbed my interest and refused to let go, and in the movie, the protagonist made a critical choice, permanently affecting their livelihood. Right away, I knew I wanted to write something to explore what would happen if the protagonist had chosen differently — not a fixfic, per se (the movie is an absolute masterpiece), but something to numb the pain of losing that person's smile forever. And so, at the start of November, I broke ground on a new project.

A month of writing and a month of polishing later, I finally have something to show for my efforts. This isn't the complete fanfic, or even the complete first book (I may have gone off the deep end), but it is a full part that hopefully demonstrates the general mood of the story and the direction I'd like to take the characters in. It picks up shortly after the aforementioned critical choice, guiding the audience through an average afternoon in the life of Yuki Nagato. By its very nature, the story involves major spoilers for the anime, but just in case this is anyone's first exposure to the series, I've tried to make it at least somewhat accessible to newcomers. It did turn out a bit dry compared to my future plans, but I'm hoping that's just because this is an intro ^^;.

Without further ado, you can check out the preview here!

I fully intend on seeing this project through to completion, and this time, there's no visual art, music, or gameplay to worry about! Plus, since I get to hyperfocus on a certain character, even my aberrant executive function should be satiated! This time, nothing can stop me! Probably! Hopefully! Please, please, O Haruhi...