Plus Minus One || BNHA OC Fanfiction

Extra #2: PMO's Beginning and Covers so far

So since we've jumped into arc 4 of Plus Minus One, I want to talk about the covers that I've made so far and a bit about the story.

Plus Minus One was a fanfic that I didn't think I would get so far and so invested I'm. This is the second book that I've gotten through forty chapters, counting prologue, without losing motivation or interest or it feeling like a chore. The first book I have even completed was an x Reader fix that shall stay in the depths of the closet because that was cringy af that I wrote in 2016 I believe. But that x Reader had like fifty chapters and it was completed so…?

Anyway, past books such as Killing Harmony, Idyllic, Sidelined, and Until We Unlock the Mystery never made it past chapter twenty or below. Once I hit that number, I sort of lost motivation for them. I had an outline, I had ideas jotted for what scene was needed but I couldn't get myself to write them. I love them all dearly with my heart and all of my past ocs but I could never force myself to finish them. It felt like I was trying to complete a chore rather than something I wanted to write for fun. The enjoyment was there but the want to write just left me. I don't know. The only thing I noticed was that they were all Pokémon and not getting anywhere.

So because all of that seemed to happen, I started to lose confidence when it came to writing. Why start something when I couldn't finish it? It was hard. At that point, I didn't want to write anything because I was scared to give up so soon. 

Around the third season of Boku no Hero Academia was when I started watching it. I heard good and bad things about it at the time and I decided to give it a shot because I think I had completed a season of Haikyuu around that time and needed something to watch. 

Bakugou threw me off the first episode when I watched it with the 'swan dive' line and the first two or so episodes were iffy to me. But as I continue to watch it, I grew to love the series. Obviously the fandom has its… ah, problems… but nonetheless, you just look for the right people. 

And against my supposedly better judgment, I started to create a BnHA OC somewhere around June of 2020. Tomohiro was the first OC for BnHA I have ever created and the premise of PMO was originally going to be solely about him, his agency, and the Seraphim with the struggle of being a single parent. But then I realized that as much as I loved Tomohiro, writing a story about him was going to be kind of hard because he's already experienced. He knows the loops and knows what to do. Originally, the only main struggles he would have is figuring how to parent and what the heck the Seraphim are doing. 

So, I aimed toward the twins. In fact, I didn't plan on having twins as my main OCs alongside Tomohiro. I've never written twin perspectives and it seemed kind of challenging at first but I wouldn't change it at all. Akihiko and Tanami are my children and I wouldn't change them. 

I had my main OCs but since the premise of the story had changed with the shifting of Tomohiro’s position, I was kind of stumped. At the time, I wasn't sure what I wanted it to be. I wasn't certain I could portray the canon characters' personalities well and I feared people telling me they were too OC for the original canon characters. But then there was the fact that before this I had read Junie's I'm No Hero, Grim's Guns and Roses, and Shelby's Kita’s Legacy.

Those stories didn't directly follow the main storyline, two way more than the other. I thought, 'well, if I can't trust myself to portray canon correctly, why not make up a story that follows the same rules but is excluded from the main story. Which is what PMO does. Yes, I do like to add small tidbits to BnHA because it's fun but I like that I have my own original world in this universe. It's fun for me. 

Around July 2020 was when I had five or so chapters written for PMO. It was the first time I had pre-written chapters for any story rather than going as I needed. I was still a bit afraid of publishing what I had so far because I was scared of giving up. So I asked if anyone would be interested in reading a BnHA book on my message board and the response was positive. So that was good.