Sparring Partners (MidoriyaxKendo)

Afterword

Hello there to any and all who might be reading this. My story, Sparring Partners, has now concluded. Despite how it may seem, the writing actually spanned the course of 3 years, which is wild to me, even now. Many setbacks and writing hiatuses prolonged the development of the story. Intense projects in college, massive increases in demands at work, going to even more school for a higher level degree, and countless other things drew me away from this story. But I always knew I would come back and finish it eventually.

I had sat on almost every chapter of this story being written since the very first winter months of 2021, with only a few remaining to be written. I pieced together one of the last chapters in mid 2022, and decided that since I was writing again, and only had one or two more chapters to complete, I could start publishing, and I'd write the rest by the time I reached the end of my backlog. Boy, was I ever so wrong. School got harder and harder, demanding more and more of my time, until I had no time to finish the very last chapter I was working on. I was missing only half a chapter of this story since October 2022. And right as things slowed down around the end of October, I learned of something tragic. My absolute favorite artist of any kind, Ryan Karazija of Low Roar, passed away at age 40 due to complications of pneumonia on October 29th, 2022. Never before had I ever connected to anything, tangible, spiritual, artistic, or interpersonal as much as I had to his music. So losing him so suddenly and unexpectedly grabbed me by the soul and shook me harder than any death I'd experienced before. This story, unfortunately, took a back seat to simply getting through each day, going to classes, and appearing alive to those around me. All I could feel was sadness, and longing for just another chance to hear something new, or to express my love for his creation. Out of this pain, this passion, developed an idea. I, along with my friend who is actually a writer unlike myself, wrote and created a short film that encapsulated the darkness I was feeling both in response to Ryan's death, and my miserable living conditions at the time. Through all of this, I never did forget about this story, but any time I tried to write, it ended up with me airing out all of my own dark feelings of sorrow and loneliness, and never fit the scene. There are probably 3 or 4 entire chapters worth of introspection and philosophy that were fully scrapped, as I didn't need 20 thousand words of Rain filling out this story.

Anyways, I'm so happy that I've finally finished this, even if it's only ever seen by 1 or 2 people. As someone who has no confidence in my ability to write with words (always preferring music or film), completing something this long that I'm happy with is monumental. On that note, this probably won't be my only multi-part story, but I can't say for sure when or what I'll write next.

One last time, I simply must extend my undying gratitude to any who have read my 67,645 word story about people and places born in someone else's mind. You're all amazing, and have my love.