was eating lunch when i remembered how the last ABoT chapter ended and needed to use all my will power not to scream at my veggies

(ABoT ch44)

Excellent

Excellent

This part has been a long time coming.

Chrissy help how do you keep motivation for such huge writing projects?? I've seen you posting about abot for a long time but I just clicked it and it's got like 360k words. My guy you are incredible and if you've got secrets to share I'd be very interested. Major props to you

(ABoT)

I'm hoping to resurrect Dickinsonian-era "paid by the word" writing gigs and retire off ABoT Kidding! kidding! I make 0 dollars and 0 cents off ABoT do not sue me IP holders.

More genuinely it's a couple things I guess. One big and simple one being just--I really like the story. It's long because there are a lot of parts I like and wanted to tell. Another is spite, because for a long period of time between 2017-2020 I thought I would never be able to come back to the story so it's something of a "fuck you look what I made anyway."

But I really REALLY think the biggest part to this all was the (tough, but doable) process of learning to be okay with this story taking however long it's gonna take, and being however long it's gonna be.

Back in the days when Tumblr was really a hub for fandom, fandom attention was extremely fleeting, and when you had any of it, it felt like it was always moments away from vanishing. Tourmaline, my 80k Steven Universe fic, I wrote in the span of just over 2 months. I had a chapter out roughly every 2-3 days for that entire sprint. I'm proud of pulling that off. But my main motivation for doing that was absolutely the fear of losing people's attention and interest if I dawdled even a little.

Early-days ABoT was like that too. The first 9 or 10 chapters were all posted in intervals of about 2-3 days apart. I was staying up extremely late to do this which wasn't good for me and I was doing it because I was afraid of losing people's interest and I was getting more intimidated the more I realized how long ABoT would likely be. And then for school and life reasons, my update schedule absolutely had to slow. And I was having a bad time because it was like I could feel myself losing readers and losing relevance, and the backlash was growing, and even when I was finding the time to write I'd started burning out hard on my passion for the story. I'd get frustrated with my own plot and characters, and you can't write a good passion project while frustrated with the characters.

And then I kinda quietly admitted defeat because the stress and the backlash were too much to handle and I couldn't wring anymore of this from myself. After a 1 year, 2 years, I was pretty much sure my readership was long gone. I still thought about the story constantly! I still cared. I just figured I'd missed my window and would never be able to come back except to backlash.

Then just shy of 3 years, I said "fuck it, actually" and wrote the next chapter (okay it was a lot more complicated than "fuck it" but that would take too long to explain.) And in FACT, a ton of the readership came back! It was an extremely warm reception! And new readers, too. Just a lot of really warm, positive feedback. Which absolutely blew my mind because it was completely at odds with my feeling that things needed constant updates to cling to relevance. And the idea of "well if they waited 3 years..." has helped me a lot with allowing time and breaks between chapters. I don't burn out on them. I edit them more. My update schedule's been more like 2-6 weeks between chapters, rather than days.

Allowing that down time, letting ABoT be a steady jog instead of an all-out sprint, has been absolutely crucial to getting as far through it as I am. Even right now, it's been pretty long since chapter 45. I dove super deep into putting ch45 together and I kinda needed some time off after to decompress and step away to not risk burn out. Which was very needed and helpful and now I'm back to chugging through ch46.

There was an old comment, I think on Reddit, that I read years ago which has stuck with me ever since. Someone was recounting a conversation with a single mother who was considering going back to college to get her degree, but was hesitant to do so because she would be 40 by the time she graduated. To which the other person responded "You'll be 40 anyway."

And "you'll be 40 anyway" plays in my head a lot. Like, ABoT's been going for almost 6 years. Well 6 years were going to pass anyway. ABoT might not be done for x-many more months. X-many more months are gonna pass anyway. Time's gonna happen anyway. So I'm not worried about whether this thing is still going by then or not. I'm just keeping at it until it's done.

Hi just wanted to let you know I’ve been absolute obsessed with ABoT the last couple weeks. I could go on and on about it, but I just quickly wanted to say thank you and also I love how each main character has like a death motif related to them.

Like for Reigen it’s knives/stabbing. He constantly gets in knife fights. His hand was shredded like by “razor blades.” He helps Mob cut food with the intent to teach him it is how you use a tool that matters. He tries killing himself and Mogami with the knife.

For Ritsu, it’s obviously drowning. He has dreams of drowning, he is drowning in a whole lot of emotional stuff, he tried to drown Reigen. And the fountain is very important to him.

Teru I feel would be hanging, for the obvious stuff like being choked with his tie and trying to choke ritsu (which that chapter broke me btw read it like eight times)

Mob I am about unsure, but I feel like fire would be his symbol. The Mogami household where all his suffering stemmed from ‘burned down’ (twice). I can’t remember what chapter, but after he was being scolded by Mogami about saving Teru, there was a line like ‘a flame of hope burned in him.”

Anyway I just love literary analysis and symbolism. and I cannot tell you how much I love your fanfic. Keep up the great work! Thanks for writing!

(ABoT)

yessssssssssssssss the motifs. It just feels so right to attach a Thing to a Character which communicates something deeply thematic and personal about them.

Reigen and knives!!! Of course it has its roots in canon, with his key speech to Mob about how psychic powers are like knives, and they're not to be pointed at people. It felt only right to extrapolate that in ABoT. His career-ending encounter, at the very start which made him quit Spirits and Such, was a possessed man with a knife who assaulted Reigen and sliced his cheek (leaving a scar which is something of a key identifier of ABoT!Reigen).

The knife comes into play again during the Tetsugami encounter, when Mogami uses a knife to threaten to kill Tetsuo, and ends up slicing Reigen's hand with it. (And that hand-slice, of course, was foreshadowing for the hand-shredding in Reigen's future). And the second time Mogami possesses Tetsuo and comes for Reigen, the knife weapon returns with him.

And then... his big moment in ch45. The knife he brought along to kill himself (and Mogami possessing him). In a grandiose "we both go out on my terms" manner. During earlier mental planning of that moment, I'd toyed with the idea that Reigen came to the Mogami house with Tetsuo's (well, Haruki's) gun. It would be a more effective weapon to try to kill both himself and Mogami with. But thematically, it didn't resonate with me. It had to be the knife. It always had to be the knife.

(And it absolutely had to be the knife because, even more importantly, Reigen's attempt at self-sacrifice was not the solution. Thematically, it never could be. After all the thematic talk about how self-sacrifice hurts the people you leave behind, and you can't simply make yourself not matter to them--Reigen killing himself with the knife to stop Mogami could never work. Do not point your knives at people. Do not use knives to hurt people. Do not use knives to hurt yourself.)

Ritsu and drowning. This ties in deeply with the emotional toll he suffers as the surviving child--he feels smothered, he feels suffocated, he feels pressure from all sides to behave exactly as everyone needs him to behave...and he feels like he's drowning, and cannot speak up, and cannot breathe.

And his relationship with water manifests from this. "The water trick" being the thing he internalized from his brother, and manifests when his powers awaken. The way he uses cold water in chapter 7 to soothe and numb himself from his parents' rejection. The control of water being about all he has to use against Teru in chapter 15. The use of water to drown Reigen during their fight. The drowning in the storm that happens in ch41. The fountain, and the way he throws off Mob's water cover when Mob was trying to shield Ritsu from the barrier.

Teru's symbolism is a bit varied! He gets to be the first to play out the "tie as a noose" symbolism, which comes in strong later for Reigen (the evolution of Reigen's tie color symbolizing his emotional journey -- blue when he was alone, switched for white when he first has Mob, switched for pink as that emotional attachment grows, switched for blood-covered stand-in of a noose when Mogami takes his body... Reigen's tie evolving into Mogami's noose was a piece of symbolism I was eager to get to). But back on Teru--Ritsu strangling him with his tie was an inversion of Teru's canon role of strangling Mob... ...and then, of course, in chapter 33 where Teru gets to play this straight against Ritsu ("I think maybe you forgot, Kageyama, that you don’t need powers to do terrible things.") and he strangles Ritsu with his bare hands.

Burning, I'd say, is Mogami's domain. First with the illusion of the house burning down, and now with Reigen having actually set the corpse on fire. That thing of such coldness (as Mob emphasizes how much Reigen, and Reigen's place, are warm) being culled by Reigen setting it alight and making it burn to the ground. The kinds of cruel life in Mogami's house are the sort which need to be killed with fire. And see the importance for Mob here is how fire is a good thing in him. "Flame" is hope, and energy, and passion in his which four years trapped in the Mogami basement had robbed from him, and now Mob is finding again. Finding that warmth and that flame is an important aspect to taking down Mogami, to being part of what makes Mogami, and the house, burn down once and for all.

dkjdbfbjdf thank you for indulging me on this!!! the symbolism in ABoT is so very important to me I love when people pick up on it!!!

i keep seeing you talk about your fic (abot, right?) and i really wanna watch mp100 now specifically so i can read it (where tho???) but i just wanted to say that it must feel so amazing for you?? for people to realize and comment on all the small specific details you put in and be amazed by them. like thats gotta feel so satisfying right

(ABoT)

So I believe crunchyroll has mp100 as well as (various illegal streaming/torrenting sites.) I do recommend the series! Though also ABoT is canon-divergent enough that I believe you can read ABoT without knowing the source material. Either/or!

Djdjjdjd also yeah!! It’s incredibly gratifying to have people pick up on details and go wait a minute . Previous chapter (45) I finally got to reveal one big thing that’s been a key underpinning detail, whose very first hint was dropped back in chapter 12.

It was never meant to be an in-your-face kind of thing. More like if you were paying attention there were a dozen or so small details dropped periodically between 12 and 45 which could lead you to the right conclusion.

And some people correctly guessed it. And I just had to quietly watch and wait as the idea was thrown around in the discord (and sometimes in reviews or on tumblr) and not really weigh in or tip my hand. Until I got to slam it home in ch45.

I don't know you obv so idk if this was intentional or not & this might sound kinda weird but I wanted to thank you for not making Reigen's "sacrifice" in ch. 45 actually be the "solution" - be what immediately fixed everything or made it all better. Having struggled with suicidal ideation for years & repeatedly having to convince myself that ending my life will not make things better for other people or make the world a better place, I really appreciated that. Phenomenal chapter overall btw!

(ABoT ch45)

fdjkf, yeah, yes this is intentional. I was talking about this last night on the ABoT discord let me copy-paste some stuff I said from that discussion:

ABoT is, to the ABSOLUTE best of my ability, thematically consistent. To have Reigen's sacrifice be the end of Mogami and just get… a weepy "he sacrificed himself so noble" send off to Reigen… would've grated badly against the hard-fought-for-themes of living to fix your mistakes, not dying for them.

And on some level Reigen is aware of this. He hides the plan from Ritsu knowing that the hypocrisy of it would have deeply off-put Ritsu. How high-and-mighty Reigen has been telling Ritsu that getting himself killed is a terrible answer, and Ritsu would be wrong to choose it, only to have Reigen demonstrate that was lip service by taking the spot himself…

The CHARACTER moment is meant to be consistent. Like, Reigen would do this. Because for all the big-game he can talk to other people, he's still constantly living with the voice in his head of ("Oh but not you. You're an exception. You don't matter. You can tell other people they matter but deep down, that's not you.")

So from a character standpoint: Yes, Reigen would do this. From a narrative standpoint: No, this cannot be the means by which Mogami is defeated.

Particularly, particularly with this line, right before he's set to kill himself and Mogami:

“—There’s a great ramen shop around here, you know? I took Mob there. I hope Mob goes back there after this is all over. I hope he goes back 100 times, tells ‘em Reigen sent him.” The fire crackled. Reigen’s smile faded. “…I hope Mob never goes back. I hope after today he forgets everything he ever had to do with us. I hope he forgets everything about me. I hope he forgets you. I hope he goes home with Ritsu. I hope his life picks right back up where it left off. I hope it’s normal.” Reigen’s eyes were dry. Everything evaporated in the heat. “I hope I never matter again after this moment.”

This really is meant as a genuinely powerful moment for Reigen. All his self-sacrifices, from the start, have been done with that… twinge of "I'm doing this so maybe I can finally matter, somehow". Still GOOD. Still selfless! Still noble! But rooted in something just a bit pathetic and desperate in Reigen. This desperate need to matter to someone became his literal downfall when it came to Mob and keeping him for so long--this was the choice that allowed Ritsu to get worse, and allowed Mogami to come back.

And in Reigen's final moment he's... relinquishing exactly that. This isn't "for Mob to know Reigen mattered." This is for Mob. End statement. Reigen can vanish into absolutely nothing after this, and it's what he wants. This is big for Reigen.

…………………..but. but but but but BUT BUT!!! THIS IS ALSO. EXCEPTIONALLY NAIVE… To just say "I hope he forgets about me" and wish it into existence won't make it so. (Ritsu is literally trying to do the same to his parents and he's gotten a hell of a lot of flack for it.)

Truth is, Reigen's death will ABSOLUTELY hurt Mob. There is no forgetting Reigen that Mob can just do. This sacrifice Reigen is making will hurt Mob. Point blank. It'll hurt him DEEPLY. ABoT focuses so deeply on the hurt of missing loved ones. On how experiences and connections matter and there is no just brushing things off as meaningless. To wish Mob's life just goes back to normal is naive. To wish Mob would just forget Reigen and not care is naive. And Reigen is so… caught up in his own Reigen-ness, he doesn't have the capacity (more like he can't afford) to consider the damages of his sacrifice. He tells himself it's simply necessary… So he builds this little fantasy, where he doesn't have to think about what hurt he's causing. So he tells himself "I hope I won't matter after this", which is so much easier than the truth of how much dying can hurt others. Reigen would matter after this moment, whether he wanted to or not.

He just needs to believe he can make this simple enough to do. "It's him or Ritsu". "It's him or Mob". And Reigen will always be the more sacrificable person. "It's only right", since it's his fault Mob went back to Mogami. "It's only right", because it's his fault the horde found Ritsu in the first place.

But Reigen's wrong. And it really, really comes back to this quote from ch39:

“’The one of us who’s home safe.’ Bullshit. Make it the both of you who are home safe.” Reigen adjusted his legs, one knee up, lame hand resting over it. “Choose the option where you both go home alive and healthy, and then do the hard work to make up for whatever awful things you’ve done. Apologize to the people you hurt. Make it up to them. If it takes years then put in the years. If it means facing consequences, face them. Be better. Be brave like your brother and choose to make the hurt end with you. I’ve seen him do it. Don’t tell me you can’t do the same.” Reigen glanced to Ritsu. “If you get yourself killed, you’re just exploding all the hurt you caused outward. You’d be dying with a debt you’re forcing your family to pay. If you want to help your brother, accept responsibility for what you’ve done, pay that debt off yourself, and save your brother.” Reigen looked forward again. “Mob’s been through enough. Don’t take his little brother away from him on top of it all. He loves him more than anything else in the world.”

Thematically, Reigen choosing to kill himself to end Mogami could never succeed. It could never be the solution that fixes things. It's entirely too at-odds with the absolutely central themes in ABoT of living to fix your mistakes, and living to heal, and deserving the chance to live and heal.

chrissy i am goign to fucking throw up

(ABoT ch45)