(1/2) Over the past couple of months I have done a lot of thinking, and more recently Stockholm Syndrome has been coming up quite frequently with me. Looking back at the decision to cancel the continuation of the story feels like it was the right thing to do at the time, I don't regret giving up on something I was so passionate about. It gave me time to reflect on myself, who I surround myself with, and what I want in life. Yes, I have been considering starting it back up, indulging in the story once more to hopefully improve it once again, and this time make it the way I always wanted it to be. Now that I'm older (the story is nearly 4 years old now) I can see that the message I wanted to share is not coming across the way it should 100%. The novel was made as a coping mechanism for my repressed sadistic and intrusive thoughts, while coming across as a deeply flawed work with many things wrong with it. It took me just up until recently to accept the fact that, while the story was told from Juliet's perspective, I was not Juliet. Never was I the victim I always thought of myself as, and the story was never a self insert in the ways one may perceive it. Lots of people have come to me about how Murdoc is not particularly very canon in my story, and while I disagree somewhat with the statement, there's an honest explanation. Although told from Juliet's point of view, I realized that I was self inserting as Murdoc. When someone who was close to me, who put a lot of time into helping with the rewrite, exited my life, there was a moment where I had felt so much anger I began to plan out scenes that were very out of hand, and then it clicked. What I was doing wasn't healthy. That being said, this is not what I want to leave behind, this isn't who I am, and it isn't who Murdoc is either. While keeping the story mostly the same, I have plans to edit out a few scenes, and maybe consider changing the entire story's point of view from first person to third.
