Moving Along Remastered

Preface

Preface:

When I started Moving Along, it was with the goal of being your standard isekai furry affair. There had never been any intention for it to evolve into the furry fantasy adventure it eventually became. Coming off of already having written a coming of age adventure story, I thought I wanted to delve more into slice of life. It was immediately apparent three chapters in, however, that I just couldn't help myself. My need to write a character driven story about a deeply hurt individual overwrote all reason. I'm glad that it did. Sounds crazy when I say it like that.

That was my inspiration behind Atticus Simons. A young man with deep seated regrets and trauma that he had to overcome, thrust into a world that brought his Demons to the forefront. While not exactly an original premise, I was determined to make it my own. During my time in college, I tried to make it a biweekly series that went to monthly, and eventually bimonthly. I think you can see the trend here.

There was a time when the stresses of the world stifled and eventually stunted my creativity. I won't go into too many details, but I suffered a few terrible losses that put me in a dark place. Writing, something that was once an easy task, soon became an exercise in fighting through crippling anxiety and depression. Often times, I felt like I wasn't good enough to write the story I was telling, so for the longest time, I decided not to write it altogether.

It was a terrible writer's block that took a long time to recover from. It didn't matter that people liked this story as much as they did because, at the time, I didn't. That was really selfish of me and deprived a lot of people of a story they'd grown to love so much. I'm sorry about that. While I still don't think Moving Along is the greatest story, I understand and respect why people do like it. I like it too. Love it even.

What eventually brought me back after so long was seeing all the comments left behind on this story from people that loved it and missed it. I frequently got DMs asking me to come back to the story they'd read when they were younger with such a passion that warmed my heart. The final push I needed was when a user by the name of Soul Hyena despaired over the fact that I wasn't coming back. I felt so guilty about letting them down, about letting all of you down, that I finally opened my documents again.

Though it was hard at first, every sentence being an anxiety inducing terror, I slowly got my groove back. To get myself back into practice, I wrote the FanFiction known as Beastars: Curtain Call. It was your standard slice of life story (finally got around to one!) about an extension to the anime/manga of the same name. I had so much fun writing it that it revived a passion in me that I long thought I'd lost forever. That was when I got back to work planning and mapping out the last few chapters of Moving Along.

While I'd already had some ideas for the longest time about how the story would go, my recent experiences inspired me to try something new. Something more personal and creative. To do that, I needed to start from zero. I went back and read the entire story from the beginning all the way to the part where I'd gone on an indefinite hiatus. Along the way, I edited and changed some scenes while still keeping the spirit of the original ideas alive. Rereading it all felt so strange, like I was reading a story written by someone else entirely. In truth, I wasn't the same author then as I am now. I was less experienced, and more naive about the ways of the world. I kind of liked it though. There was something more innocent about that.

I made it my job to bridge the gap between my old style of writing and my new style. A true collaboration between my younger and current self. A remastering of sorts. Hence the name. I like to think that the two of us did a good enough job together. My past self definitely would've been blown away by what we accomplished. Together we made a story that he and I can be proud of. So I got to work and for the past eight months, I worked hard to finish the story that so many people were waiting for. It was hard. Some days I came home from work exhausted, yet still opened that document and continued to write. There were a lot of sleepless nights filled with planning, writing, and editing.

Any time I felt like it was too much, I remembered all of those who were counting on me to finish. I owed it to them, you, to make all the pain I'd gone through worth it. Most days, I sat bleary eyed and exhausted, fueled only by the desire to see this story told. Not a single day went by where I regretted this choice, even as I fell asleep mid sentence some nights. Even when I could hardly get up for work the very next day. I chipped away at it gradually until the time came where I was at the home stretch.

Sometime during the editing of the final chapter, I broke down into uncontrollable sobbing. Not because it was crushingly sad, but because I realized I was near the end. The time to say goodbye to these characters that I grew to love and cherish was fast approaching. Despite them not being real, each one of them hold a special place in my heart. They're a part of me in ways I didn't fully understand until that moment. It's like having a part of yourself that you present to the world for all to see. Giving them their final send off meant more to me than I ever could've known. And while I'm sad that it's over, I'm overjoyed that I can finally give this story the ending it deserves.

Don't be sad that this is the end of something. Be happy that it's the start of something new. It's only the beginning from here. I've got more stories on the horizon with the production of Project Galaxy already in the planning stages. There'll come a time when this story is revisited, though it'll be some time. As I've been working on it for a good chunk of my writing career, I want to do other things before I get back to it.

With all that said, I hope you enjoy Moving Along Remastered.

This is for all the souls who've endured over the years. This is for you.