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0-scorch-the-earth-0 · 3 months

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Ooo you’re rewriting Recalibrate?

Kinda!

Essentially, yes, but it’s not the same recalibrate from before. I’m currently working on making a slightly new title, like “Recalibrated” or “Recalibrate Me”. I want to make the fanfic I originally intended to set out to make. A story of love, grief, and the power of growing with someone by your side.

I have a good description of what exactly I’m doing with recalibrate in a recent update of the fanfic. I’ll just copy paste what’s there and put it here for y’all to see 💕💕

Also, I was rewriting Recalibrate chapter by chapter there for a little while before I got too overwhelmed. It’s rewritten up to chapter 6, with better writing and some added scenes, so I highly suggest checking that out!!!

Also also, I wrote a preface to my notes release (which will make sense after reading what is below). It felt like a very important message, so I’ll copy that too.

The update I posted in Recalibrate:

Hey there, all!

It’s been… QUITE awhile since an update. I hope this email finds you all well <3

I’m unsure how many times I’m going to make this apology. It certainly has been too many times to count. But I’ll give it anyway; I’m sorry for disappearing on this story yet again. It’s both unfair to my unwavering readers and to my characters themselves.

I could make the excuse that life has been crazy. Which in all fairness, it has. I got engaged to the person I wrote about in an update so long ago (we’ve been together for over 5 years now!), we bought our first house, I got a stable job at a library, I’ve become way more invested in my cosplaying, I’ve made tons of friends, and I’m just generally more happy now than I ever was before! Which I guess brings me to my next talking point?

I wrote Recalibrate during a time in my life where there was a lot going wrong. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about what I was going through, but it’s safe to say a lot of it came out in my writing. I was mentally unhappy, my parents controlled every aspect of my life (I was writing and posting Recalibrate in secret, as there was a strict “no technology” rule for me in my household growing up), and the only relationship I was allowed to have (straight!) at the time quickly became toxic and made me feel unworthy to be living. I’m sure some of that bled through into the plot of Recalibrate. That coupled with my immaturity meant there were a lot of things both added and missed in the story that didn’t aid it.

For example, the seamless set-up of Zane coming to terms with his artificialness as being something to respect and accept about himself would have led to some powerful character development, but instead I chose to have an ending where he gets magic-ed into being human. Doesn’t make sense to what Zane’s character needed to learn about himself as I know it to be now. And it was also a clear attempt to give myself an example of someone who successfully does not deal with their internal issues and just waits for enough self-sacrifice to happen before they are free of what ailed them without doing any introspection on their self-loathing :D And then for some reason, I also felt the necessity to add a big bad (Morro) into the story, and I distinctly remember thinking “well all good stories have a big bad, so I have to”, not comprehending that sometimes, a story can just be about two characters having issues and growing together. These are just tiny details of what I’m talking about. That’s not even bringing about that my romance writing was, looking back on it, stunted and skittish. Unrealistic. But I can’t blame my younger self. I never knew what an actual relationship, with real attraction and love and trust, looked like until I started living on my own and met my now-fiancé. Back then, I was just trying to do what everyone else was, not realizing until later that I’m not broken and that I literally was just a gay kid trying to pretend at being straight.

This is all to say that, this morning I woke up with a sore throat and sniffles, 5 days before my 25th birthday, saw some anonymous person had left kudos on Recalibrate, and decided to figure out what had really gone wrong in my motivation and love for this story (after chugging DayQuil of course).

You might not like what I have in mind for this story.

A lot of you loved Morro, and I’ll admit I loved my characterization of him and Archer and Bansha. I liked the lore I created for them and the dynamic the trio quickly settled itself into. But everytime I went to continue the rewrite for Recalibrate, this huge plot that I had devised as a 14 year old child would stare me down and make the task feel virtually impossible. I mean, I didn’t even get half way through my planned story, and that was before I started rewriting and adding even more things.

My plans were ambitious. And they were made without knowing myself, my limits, my desires; they were made without relying on my strengths as a writer. I was trying to do what everyone else did, and I wasn’t aware yet that my best writing has always come from character focused introspection and slowly budding romance, not from action or complicated puzzle-like plots.

So, I’m thinking about getting rid of the Morro stuff. I wrote such an idea in a rewrite note back in 2021. In fact, that was the last thing I wrote, before I likely became too heartbroken or too worried about disappointing you all that I didn’t reopen my notes document until today. But in order to deliver a story that I have promised for over a decade, I think I know what needs to be done.

I have notes, so many notes, on what the story would’ve been. Sometimes, when I’d lost hope that I could ever finish the story, I’d think about posting all those notes here for all of you as a declaration of me ending my long hiatus with one last “sorry”.

But I owe younger me more than that. I owe you all more than that. I owe the fandom that raised me more than that. And I’ll be honest when I say I don’t think younger me would’ve been all too upset about me scrapping the large plot I gave myself. After all, this fic was only originally supposed to be an explanation as to what happened to Dr. Julien, written before I even shipped Glacier.

If you mourn the old Recalibrate and the plot an on-the-whole different person made, I’m deeply sorry. If seeing the notes of all that would’ve occurred in the old plot would ease your grief, please let me know. As it is currently, I’m contemplating making another A03 fic as an archive with the chapters I will be deleting, as well as with the notes that would’ve carried me to the end, had I been built for writing extensive plots. Let me know if that interests you.

From here on out, I want to write the story I intended. I want to write the story that my heart wants to write, instead of the story my brain thinks people want. These characters have been banging on my ribcage for ages, begging to be let out and finally be written to an end. I will try my best to listen to them. I hope you all will still want to journey with me.

Thank you all <3

-Matty

The Preface I posted in Ao3 along with my first revealed notes:

In creating a closure to my original Recalibrate story, I’ve decided my first entry to be on the most vital page of my notes, of which I referenced more than any other page. The “End Goals” page, I called it. This page was written on 1/20/16, which was 17 days after I posted the first chapter on FanFiction.net (A fun factoid, which I am unsure how many of you know: I was posting Recalibrate almost a whole year before moving it over to Archive of Our Own. I didn’t know about Ao3 at the time, mainly because I wasn’t even allowed to be on the internet, and barely had enough time to sneak a post on ffn, let alone research other sites I could share my story to).

The end goals served as a road map for me, the writer. And for you, the reader, I assume they serve as somewhat of a table of contents for the updates ahead. A taste of where the story was going, and where it was to end up. For some of you, this very broad summary that follows below may be all you need to sate your curiosity. It gives no exact details. No play by play. Some of you may appreciate that more. If so, I’m glad to satiate you. But for those of you who wanted to know the specific details, the “who dies”, the “how”, I will be making further updates that include chapter specific notes, overarching plot notes, and even a map I drew (if I can figure out how to attach images to Ao3 chapters, that is).

For those of you who wish to keep the story forever a mystery, I appreciate that just as equally. But I suggest you should stop reading soon, then, because for all intents and purposes, we are now entering spoiler territory. If you can even call it that.

However you wish to consume the following content, I want to thank all of you. The comments, the kudos, the support, the dms on Insta and Tumblr; it has been everything to me. I never forget each person who has reached out to me saying I got them through hard times, sometimes that I saved their life. That my writing is their nostalgia, their safe space. I can never express how deeply impacted I am that my writing had such a profound meaning to many of my readers. And, of course, beyond. I remember, way back in the day, the author of then-not-written Chips and Salsa reaching out to me and saying they were inspired by Recalibrate in some way, shape, or form to begin writing a Glacier Fanfic. Which then became the most prolific fanfic of glaciershipping in probably the history of glaciershipping.

My impact has been greater than any scope I could have possibly imagined. I will never, ever take that for granted. I’m so grateful for the role I have been able to play in your lives. I hope, of course, that you may join me on my next journey. But if not, if this is where we part, I just wanted to remind you how special you are. How much you matter. And how grateful I am for your presence in this world, and the small slice of your life that you offered to me in spending your time to read my story, and to read this.

Remember: Ninja. Never. Quit. <3

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