~Broken Family~

~ a final farewell ~

Wow. The end. I never thought I'd get this far.

There's so many people I'd like to thank, so much time I'd like to spend groveling on and on about how each and every one of you holds a special place in my heart, but people reading it in the future might think that's a little weird because this story has just popped up completed for them. They didn't have to sit and wait for days, weeks, months, even years, waiting for me to finally publish the final chapter. So I'm going to limit my groveling.

Most writers, I feel, do not give enough story into their stories. If you want, here's how everything went down. If you want your free poptart, skip to the end :)

This whole thing started out because I was bored and cramped in a small space. My family was temporarily living in an RV in the driveway while our house was getting fixed up, and the workers said "2 weeks" but that turned into 6 months. Trapped inside an RV with 6 people and 2 dogs is not fun, let me tell you. 

To distract ourselves, we turned to Marvel and Voltron. Even though we were still on the first GOTG movie and I'd only seen clips of Tom Holland's Spider-Man on YouTube, I thought it was a magnificent idea to start writing a book. I'd read cool fanfictions online and I was bored. Why not?

So I started small. A little story about Tony adopting Peter, right? Sounded cute.

Since the RV got so stuffy, I would sit in the garage and write. I had a little desk in the dusty corner and when I got bored of sitting in that, I would move to sit sideways in our gator, leaning one of my arms against the steering wheel and writing about Tony's parental instincts. I published the first few chapters together in October 2021.

I remember my ignorant excitement when someone voted on it for the first time. When the first comment was dropped. When the book passed 1k. I kept writing down adorable little updates in my planner on how it was doing.

April of 2022. I was making friends on wattpad and smiling at every single comment. What I had planned to be a 20-chapter story had turned into a 402 page novel, with twists and side plots. I remember looking excitedly at all the prospective plot holes of Iron Family and thinking, "why stop here?" I was getting busier, sure, and my interest in Marvel was tapering off, but I felt like there was more to their story.

And so I took on a bigger endeavor, one that was much harder because the characters were less concrete than Peter Parker: the sequel.

June of 2022 and I realized how hard this was actually going to be. 5 years was not an easy time gap to fill, and I had to take some time off for summer stuff. By the time school started, I was a mess of stress. I'm not going to go into any details, but it got so bad that my parents took me to a doctor to test if I still had ADHD.

September 2022 was when this appointment happened, and the doctor said I didn't have ADHD. I had autism.

This actually impacted the story a lot through my perception of the world. I went through a lot emotionally, but I felt like I finally knew what was wrong with me. I think I took a month or two off of the story because I was a mess. That, and my pet sheep Cody kept having to go to the animal-ER and get surgeries. I also got a job at a trampoline park and was therefore busier. (No I still can't do any flips)

I have had a lot less enthusiasm for the sequel as the original, and that was probably evident as it took me 2 times longer to write this and the writing itself was less uppity and energetic. Broken Family is a lot darker and more mature, but still has some humor and religious themes underneath, and I think that mirrors the journey I've gone through since starting this.

September 2023 and here I am stuck on the same novel in a different desk (it's actually inside a house lol). The same person writing at a different computer. Replying on the same website to different readers.