April 28 2019
Written in 2022:
I love Fruits Basket. That series is so traumatized you walk away feeling light-headed and weepy with characters carved into your soul.
I was rereading it because of the fresh 2019 remake of the anime, but it unfortunately entered this weird turning point in my relationships that really fucking sucked.
We wrote a fucking Fruits Basket AU of our fucking D&D game.
“What the fuck?” Yeah, I know. The concept was fun and cool but the way it was executed was rough, super hard-hitting. They wanted some real torturous shit, so I delivered, and created this completely toxic character that gave me no joy to write. Rather it felt like I just tapped into the anxiety monster to create a being of pure abuse, but my ex-partners fucking loved them for some reason. I can’t wrap my head around it. It made me feel wretched to write, and I focused the narrative on them as they wished, and they disliked writing my own character? And told me “you already had your arc, your part is done, I never get to finish a fic!”
Like okay guys but an ending doesn’t feel like an ending if the writer says it’s not done??? They wanted their fancy endings and only theirs, but gods forbid I finish writing my own. “He got the girl. I don’t care if the last moment we see him in this fic is crying in his underwear. He won.” Bro I write fic for a happy ending why are you doing this.
Anyway. They requested I write more of the Shiki Jamala character, specifically as the partner of their character and active abuser. It felt like they were using me for victim points and pointing at it as something I had in me, no matter how distressed it made me. And they would complain if they didn’t finish their depressing stories and I got to finish the ones that made me happy.
Writing to make me happy was frowned upon and I was writing too much.