I See Emeralds

Author's Note: One Year Anniversary

Hello! It's been a while! It's me, todomewsu, also known as that one Wattpad user who likely ruined your sleep schedule and made you read an overly-long Hetalia fanfic all in one night! Apologies for that, haha. I ruined my own when I wrote this for half the night every night, so we're even. (By the way, my old username was awesome-amethyst and I no longer have the pictures I used for the covers of my stories saved, so please excuse the incorrect username on everything...)

It's currently December 12th, 2016. I just checked the first chapter of I See Emerald and the earliest revision that it shows me is from December 16th, 2015. So, in just a few days, it will be the official one year anniversary of I See Emeralds. Maybe it seems a little dumb to make an author's note just for something like that, but oh well. 

I'm going to be blunt for a moment here: I don't care about Hetalia anymore. I more than likely will never update my other Hetalia stories unless I suddenly feel interested in doing so again. But this fanfic was the first full fanfic that I ever finished, and it's the only one I've published on Wattpad, so it holds a special spot in my heart. I had a lot of fun writing it, back when Hetalia was one of my biggest passions. 

I know everyone is extremely out of character and everything is very cheesy and poorly-paced and just...overall, awful. I have a lot of regrets and frustrations when it comes to I See Emeralds. I'm obviously not a perfect author, but I've definitely improved a lot in the year since I published this. But people seemed to really like this story despite all of that? 

I never expected to get 14k reads and 1k votes on any of my stories, much less for one of my stories to get all of that by itself! Thank you all so, so much. I try to reply to every comment, but sometimes I just can't manage to think of anything to say in response. :( But all the comments on this story have been incredibly positive. 

While I personally dislike this story a lot, it makes me so happy that it's made other people happy in some way. All the kind words have inspired me to keep writing the other things that I've worked on throughout 2016. I read every comment and I appreciate how many people have taken time out of their days to say something about my story. It means a lot to me, it really does.

Unfortunately, I'm a huge procrastinator and I'm extremely shy about publishing anything, so I don't have anything major to publish this year. I can only write a story this long if I get really into it, which I obviously did with I See Emeralds. My fandoms also switch around a lot, so it's getting hard to decide what fandom to write for these days. Hopefully winter break will give me some motivation like it did last year, when I spent most of it writing I See Emeralds.

This is overly-sappy, I know, I know. But I felt like I owed some sort of status update, since I doubt many people check my profile. So, I guess what I'm trying to say in this chapter is this: thank you, all of you. 

Have a lovely day/night! :) Happy holidays! I wonder what 2017 will bring?

(By the way...if you want an actually well-written romance, why not check out the anime Yuri on Ice? ;D It's amazing. You won't be disappointed, I promise.)