Learning Purpose [Unus Annus Fanfiction]

A/N

(This is going to be super long I am so sorry XD you do not have to read this all if you don't want to. I will bold titles so you can skip around to things that interest you.) Hello! Wow, I can't believe I got here haha. It feels surreal. Like, I actually got here. I actually made this lol. How did I do that???

Thank you!

Okay, enough about my own surprise lol. Well, first of all, I would like to thank you guys for getting me to 500 reads! That's really cool and though I never said it much in my parts, each time the reads increased I got really excited and had a dance party around my room haha. Thank you so much for sticking with this lil project I had, and even though there probably aren't many of you, it still means the world that you read this story, even if you skipped a few parts here and there because yes I know this was long as hell I am so sorry.

Personal Impact

Throughout this book I learned how to manage my time, and I realized the importance of staying patient even when my passion for the project dulled a little. One thing I really found to keep me going was picturing a few key scenes I had, like Mark and Amy's meetup, the entirety of chapter 15 (I think? The one with Jack and Ava) and brainstorming things that would make them better, or visualizing them as if they were a movie. It gave me goals to reach, and Chapter 19 was one of the sole reasons I finished this book lol because I wanted to go far enough to write that scene, regardless of how well I did. Therefore when I had key scenes, I wouldn't write them down any more than an outline so that I had something to work towards, and apparently it worked!

I think because of this story I've also found my writing style and it is so much easier to just sit down and write something, and I know what I have to do if I want to start a new story and keep it going, so this really set a template for my future works.

Additional Story Info

Before I get into my life, I thought it would be a good idea to explain some things in the book, and tell of some behind the scenes!

-Though I believe I have Crankiplier as one of the tags, I never meant for this to become a romance between Mark and Ethan. That was (hopefully) clear when I cast Ethan as a 17 year old boy and Mark as a 30 year old, but yeah. It's not that I am uncomfortable writing or reading romance between real people (though it depends on the level of romance), although I don't currently plan to write any romantic Crankiplier stories, I just believed that this story could bear the message that people don't have to be dating/married/sexually engaged with each other for something to be meaningful. I wanted to take their real life dynamic and show how passionate it really is, I wanted to show the importance of companionship. Hopefully that came across haha!

-I also want to apologize if I didn't handle any of the triggering scenes well, like the first scene of Ethan's contemplation with suicide, Chapter 10's scene with Amy's grief, Chapter (15?) with Ava's depression, although that one wasn't discussed as in depth as the others. Each of these are all serious problems and if I made light of any of them or portrayed them in a concerning way please tell me so I can fix them, I would hate to offend anyone or give a false portrayal of what they are actually like. Though I haven't experienced the burdening death of a loved one, I have dealt with depression and suicidal thoughts in the past, and though I have never actually attempted suicide, I imagined what mine might have been like if I had almost gone through it to try to maintain accuracy. (Since it took place many years ago, I felt comfortable analyzing my state of mind at the time. This isn't for everyone!)

-I know the ending doesn't fix everything, but that is part of the meaning. Though you may have all the time in the world, you will never get every single thing you want done. That doesn't mean that you will go unsatisfied, as there is always that word, enough, to describe your life. Along with that, I think I should mention how this isn't the only path Ethan could have taken. He could have stayed and enjoyed the time left with his friends, however I kind of hinted at the beginning that that left his life with little meaning, to him, and it mainly is about prioritizing goals you want to achieve. In another story, he could have definitely realized that he was enough with his friends there by his side, and he didn't need to make Unus Annus in the first place, but for this story, I think it was easier to write a more visible goal like a Youtube channel, and it also fit a lot better with real life.