Splatoon 2: Octo Rising

...Before We Finish

As of the time that I am writing this, it is the 29th of April - 2020 - 05:03 - Around 19 hours till the official release of the finale. My answer for writing this at such an early hour is simple; I could not bring myself to sleep. Of course, this chapter was planned to be written, so it was only a matter of time before I could put these words into fruition.

When I wrote this stories' first chapter, it was a full mess! My spelling mistakes were everywhere, the spacing was jumbled, and there were no proper paragraphs to support the gaze of the reader. To this day, I'm still going over this story just to fix it all. I'd say that around the time where Tess rescues Marie, is where my writing grew and developed.

I remember it so clearly. I used to compare this stories' votes and reads to many other Splatoon Fanfictions out there. I would always think "This is worse then mine. How come it's more popular?" Which of course, was my selfish way of thinking. But today, I could not be happier with the results I achieved. I have currently managed to achieve 11.3K reads, 700 votes and 676 comments. This is not perfect. But I cannot stress this enough - everytime I would get a new reader, whether they be passerbys or supreme Binge-Readers, I would look over my notifications with excitement.

I've made quite a few friends with my readers. Me and SentientPaintCan have a history of complementing our stories. As well as Spouter, who took an interest in my story once when I spam voted hers. Also let us not forget zak1388, who was always my loyal reader to the end. And what about my new reader, Beet_Cooky, who is new to this story. I cannot also not mention agent_two_marieee, who became my main source of inspiration, once I read her story. rosefalls as well, was a reader who I remember would vote the instant that I published chapters. Finally, there was a reader I remember, but yet have also forgotten at the same time. I remember how they would post the most enthusiastic comments I had ever gotten in this story, and I was always excited to see them. Sadly, I assume some things took place IRL for her, so they deleted their account. I'll always remember that reader, even if I had shamefully forgotten their username, their comments remain in my story as an anonymous user. Of course, there are any other readers I managed to attract for this story, and each and every one of them were all the ones that caused excitement to rush through my mind.

This is soon to be it. I honestly cannot believe that Tess' adventure has been wrapped up fully. I still can't even believe we reached the Splatfest Arc. I used to be so impatient waiting for it, but once it came I had wrote it at such a speed, that I gained my motivation to write again. That is to say, I actually did lose it when the story was in it's middle stages. I'd say when Sector 2 was reached, since there was a lot of drama within Tess' inner circle, I had lost ideas of ways to keep things interesting. Somehow I managed, but for the current readers who were caught up with this story, I believe you can all remember the extremely long hiatus' I would take for this book.

(Any readers who have not yet finished the book yet, may you please go back from whence you came. We are about to go to spoiler territory)

I would spend monthes, learning new things, developing, maturing, growing my writing skills, before coming back to this story. On big moments, like the battle against the Octo-Samurai, or the unfortunate death of Rachel, I would become so impatient. I used to yearn to write those moments so badly. I can tell you all, that as a reader, it is once thing to write a big moment for a story that can shock your audience - but it is another thing to execute it really well. I cannot tell you all the amount of comics, dramas, TV shows, cartoons, fanfictions, manga and anime that I have seen, where a big moment would occur, but it was executed really poorly. Now, I either have a horrible taste in media, or It is just a hard thing to pull off. That's definitely the latter.