(Space Battleship Yamato) Okita's Impact

[Notice] Not a Chapter

Edit 27/08/2023: Things...Did not go very well the past 4 months.

I  can say that while I'm not dead or burned out to the point I refused to look back, I am very disappointed  that I did not even deliver a status update regarding this story.

I'll state that I feel quite awful knowing that I essentially deserted this for essential 1/3 of a year, so I've written this to maybe bring some light that I haven't forgotten that I've written this niche story.

The only thing I can say is: I can only hope something this egregious does not happen again, and just hope that I can continue to pay attention to what I had started last year. (this)

But,  I have no guarantees. What I can say is that I will attempt to resume  editing for the old chapters, and try changing out or fixing some parts  of the story, and potentially replacing entire sections for others (I.E:  Previously, I had used Enterprise's personality from the anime, but, I  had decided that I would instead try orienting closer to that of the  game's, me eventually coming around to fix me considering sirens as a  "species", an error that still exists 1 year later on my part, and, as mentioned several times, lengthening the earlier chapters to a certain degree)

I just hope that to whomever is still here, that I haven't completely abandoned this fanfic entirely. While it is impossible for me to know who remains interested in this rather niche crossover, I do hope something comes out of this that will once more normalize chapter releases to not take over 1 month of writing.

I also have to say one other thing aside from my unexpected Hiatus: Thank you for the amount of views from the only 6 or so chapters this story had.

When I first started, I only expected it to be ultimately nothing more but a joke of some sorts, a scenario to see how a mentor, elder, and hero of an advanced Earth would fare in the world where the very ships that fought for humanity had themselves become human, all the while his stead, Yamato herself, would join his ventures, albeit completely in her traditional ship form without undergoing transformation (At first at least, but several comments seem to suggest on seeing a potential transformation ability)

I thought around the lines of "An Old man in a fantasy of anthropomorphized ships.", a ridiculous premise to one not exactly keen on seeing something on those categories, to keep it short, I only expected to throw in some cliches and some cheap elements to elicit a simple chuckle and follow the plot of the anime and bow wrap it to just be a static plot and ending. (By this I mean, Okita's appearance and Yamato's had absolutely no major effect of the general plot, the factions unite immediately, Yamato and or Okita are either dead or retire, and the story ends with a reunited Azur Lane.)

But, I wanted to push it a little further after browsing around the Azur Lane wiki, even more so after viewing some stories simply seem to wrap things up after the encounter of Orochi, while the anime follows that premise, I saw some opportunities for it to be expanded or even changed to let the story continue. Most of the stories also seem to center around a type of "OC" or artistic interpretation of a ship's personality, wether it'd be through some of the ship's history (real or fabricated), or taking some of the author's traits. I can't say they're bad, because I actually used some of them as  something to look at to keep interest in this genre, and also see how the stories map out their personalities. (One of them being, what is I believe "The Bulldog" (A story about USS Oregon) or something similar, and another story relating to the appearance of a Queen Elizabeth class carrier. (And one other that apparently had their battleship armed with a railgun apparently, Though I forgot the name of this one and the details completely))

That, plus, I took a somewhat deeper dive into the game's lore, and there were a lot of interesting elements that I wanted to see somewhere, some place.

So my ambition slightly grew to where it is on last year of September or October, a question of "How am I going to get our heroic grandpa and his iconic flying steel space battleship with a gun that can vaporize a part of a planet to work in this mad/insane plot of stopping a bunch of other girls that want to destroy humanity?" well, to be blunt I had many questions, but I decided to simply wing it and turned it into where Yamato was reverted to her 2199 configuration, hence the Cosmo Falcons.

In the more story side of things, I just wanted to see a longer story that wasn't tied down to how long the anime went, and mixed up with some originality while still having plenty of semblance to both parts of the anime, and a tangible presence of the game version. (Something I mentioned that I was going to have to integrate by changing the earlier chapters to accommodate for this...eventually)

But, on the earlier comments I made, I thought of this as a joke, but, when I saw those first comments, I could feel my own heart flutter, and I do mean it seriously as it meant someone actually took time out of their day to see my creation, and I couldn't help but be more compelled to try making this at least a little better, even if I was restricted by my rudimentary and rather unpolished writing abilities.

So I written another chapter, and that too had 1-2 or more comments, and it felt like "maybe, there is some interest in this oddity after all." So I kept writing, and writing, it was a wonder on how I managed to create a chapter with over 10k words at one point.

This also further influenced where I wanted to take it.

At first, I still felt like I wanted to follow the anime, but at this point, I had more awareness of some of the game's lore, elements, and some relations (though not even a large amount), and looking back, it felt like something wasn't right with the previous chapters, this was especially pointed out when they mentioned I essentially messed up when I dubbed the sirens as a "species" and sometimes being too revealing and too profound? of some of the character's traits. (Chapter 2 suffered from this quite badly.)

This, kind of resulted in an internal conflict of interest, on one hand, I wished to keep it simple, on the other hand, I wanted to make this stand out aside from just being a "Grandpa and a flying futuristic ship tries to wander through ship girl waifu land" all without it going into the point where the ship can "cheat everything" every single time, but not be a constant punching bag that becomes busted after a few punches.

This slowed down development, and probably should have been thought out in advance, the pacing itself also had a problem, since the added complexity would have made pacing slower that was what I was aiming for to try at least developing some character, action, and some dialog, but there were just many weird things that came out from my inexperienced attempts (Okita literally yanks Yamato out of Azur Lane's drydocks despite her engine being roasted and crippled and me writing down the problem as "It being Jammed by debris", as one of them, though I cannot say if the readers at that chapter are fine with it or find it impairing in any way.) All this, and some other reasons I shall not discuss, have even added to me not knowing how to write on after the previous chapter was completed.

Despite all the flaws, you readers just seemed to like it either way, and I felt like I was doing something aside from simply reading the works of others, and it brought me joy knowing that it was even liked in the first place to the point where several described it as "good", and even stuck around for a bit despite the niche-ness of my story.

So with that, I just wanted to say:

I thank you for taking the time to read this.

I really, thank you all for the support.

While I could say I'm human, I ultimately had hoped I would have a more suitable trait for writing this other than through short bursts of inspiration. Someday maybe, but I cannot see it as of yet. And I just feel shameful that I ended up leaving the readers hanging because of my inability to feasibly map out how the story should progress.

Wether I should keep this or not, I have etc to decide, but for now, I will keep it up for at least 3-4 weeks so that anyone coming back to this will know that I'm alright, and that I'm still going to be writing.

Farewell, and, with optimism, I hope I can see you on the next written chapter of this story.