The Arcana ~ The Requiem of Lost Memories

Author's Thoughts and Comments & The Thanks :)

The setting I chose is quite tragic, I admit. But as this protagonist should resemble myself, I tried to incorporate my feelings and past into her story, which means that some of the parts in this story actually happened in real life. In fact, to me. Or they just convey my greatest fear.

Somehow writing this story helped me coping with it. Loneliness, Anxiety, Self-Blame and Self-Hate are accompanying me for far too long now. I hope that I can somehow come to a resolution by writing this down.

I am still not the best with people, and I most certainly haven't found 'my' Julian yet, but I am trying to get myself to the upright ending of my own story by working hard on myself.

I am often told that I have too high expectations on myself, and that I appear distanced and arrogant at first because of that. On top of that I am shy, but don't hesitate to speak up to give my opinion. One might say I am a contradiction myself. My life is not necessarily easy, thanks to the people reminding me how different I am and mostly thanks to myself.

Now, coming back to the story. I almost managed to finish it in the last minutes of 2019 when my father wouldn't have stopped me from finishing the last sentence of the reversed ending.

At least I can now say that it is his fault, and not mine.

To the plot I don't really have much more to say, other than I cried when I wrote the reversed ending. I literally sat in front of my lapbook and cried, because I felt so bad about it. But this is just what this reversed ending is supposed to be like. Yet I still couldn't stop myself from crying, and it went this far that my parents started requesting I should write Limmericks instead, because I apparently was crying pretty hard.

Then... About why I added 'The Fool' Chapters.

I was playing with the thought of Akiko proposing to Julian for quite a while, yet, it wasn't quite fitting in the normal story, given they only know each other for approximately half a week. And although they already confess to each other, Akiko (namely me) is not the type to marry someone she only knows for less than a week. So I made some sort of 'Afterstory', where you learn what happens with them all after they defeat the Devil, and I got the opportunity to let out my poetic character part. (Don't worry, it's not a prominent one).

I personally like the reversed ending more without the 'The Fool' Chapter, but when I made one for the upright ending, it just felt incomplete not to write another one for the reversed ending. So I just did that.

But really, I would recommend reading the reversed ending without 0-The Fool, it just has more gravity and feels heavier. :)

Then, how some of you (if there are actually people reading this) might have noticed, in this story, I added some popculture references, but not as many as I actually wanted. There are some that (unfortunately, but maybe luckily for you) didn't really fit into the story, for example one of my favourite quotes of all time: "Hello. My Name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." from the Princess Bride, or "This is not very nice. It is just a donkey." from Shrek. Of course there are many other that didn't find their way into this piece of writing. But maybe in my next projects I shall include a few of them. Depends on whether I'll actually write another stories.

Now coming to 'The Thanks'.

At first, I'd like to thank myself, because I literally sat down and wrote this all, even putting myself into it. So, thanks me.

Then, my thanks goes to my parents who encouraged me to keep writing (until I started crying), and who will most probably be the first to read this story as a whole.

Next up is my english teacher, because she was willing to read my story without knowing what it is about, and wanting to give me feedback afterwards.

And then, my most important thanks goes to all of you who actually took their time to read this whole story and this 'Thanks'.

You are really the best, and I am very grateful to you that you were so interested.

This would be everything from me, Thank you and may the force be with you. :)