Ideas/Drunken Rants Book

my thoughts.

Sometimes...

Sometimes, I want to return to the world of the original The Bird and the Garden. After spending so long writing it, I grew attached to the characters and their personalities. The second one takes place in the same universe, and yet with the reset of the main character and Vao's lives, it feels different, if that makes sense.

The reset was the only way to achieve a happy ending. With most of Remnant destroyed, many of the characters from the source material now deceased, and the survivors suffering horrible PTSD, there was no way to achieve a happy ending. Had the timeline been reset, many of the survivors still would have taken their lives, Vao would have been executed, and much more.

Yet still I sometimes think about that world I created. I often find myself thinking about how the Neutral Ending went, and find myself thinking about scenarios. Scenarios such as Vao having faked his death, returning twelve years later to warn Y/N about something he found while living as a legally dead man in the mountains, far from society. Using his son as a messenger to go on one final, nightmarish adventure. An adventure that delves more into Salem and an eldritch species that humanity cannot comprehend.

Sometimes, I want to go more in depth with the original Y/N and Vao. A retired, traumatized hero with an equally traumatized, cannibalistic former puppet who is forever semi-freed from Salem's influence. In depth with what happens to the remaining characters, and Y/N's son Cyan. It ended with Y/N telling Cyan about the first nightmare against Salem, after Raven gave Cyan the dusty scrap of Vao's old clothes, showing she still was somewhat affectionate about her son. And while Yang and Y/N's relationship was irreparable, it would have been interesting to see them interact in another adventure. I could have gone more into depth about Verde, the middle-aged painter who traveled with Y/N after he visited Atlas for the first time and lived quietly as his neighbor. Possibly even into the spirits of the deceased that had been devoured by Vao.

Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying writing The Bird and the Garden 2, but sometimes I just feel people aren't as interested in it as the first story. It doesn't have nearly as many reads, and the world itself won't be as thorough as the first.

Sometimes, it feels... Wrong, given how much life I gave the characters in the first story. Their emotions, explained through and through over the span of everything they went through. From Y/N crying over the school dance and what he did to his brother, who had been there for him. From their shared PTSD of their family. From Vao suffering psychosis after murdering and eating those he loves, to Y/N beginning to shut down emotionally after everything he was experiencing.

Sometimes, I want to go back and write what happened after the Neutral Ending. A story that you, the readers don't know about. A story that goes even further in-depth to my version of Remnant. I feel a lot was left unexplained at the end. Souls, eldritch entities, spirits.

Sometimes, I look at The Bird and the Garden 2 and wonder if people don't really like it. While there are still many people who follow the story, I still have these doubts. I still miss the original characters. I had worked on that story for three years, creating the atmosphere and darkness of the story. The suspense of not knowing who was going to die or survive.

And sometimes, I wonder if it would have been better if I just left it off at the Good Ending. Never going back to writing and such. Sometimes I feel trapped, that RWBY is the only set of fanfictions that remains alive. Back in the early 2010s, fanfics about all types of shows could be found. But nowadays, those fanfics have been abandoned, never to be touched again. RWBY is the only one that I feel survived, which is the source of all my fears.

I worry that people will lose interest. I want nothing more than to write stories people will enjoy, something that can bring people together. The original The Bird and the Garden achieved that, receiving overwhelming amounts of positive comments. Some people even said I was writing the characters better than RoosterTeeth was. It made me happy that I was writing something people loved. It felt like it was something different from the usual fanfiction.