Chapter Text
Well, it's been exactly one year since I last (officially) updated the Ramble Room, and while it's not that unusual for a work to go quiet in that amount of time, I like clarity as much as I like not shutting the fuck up, so: Here's what the hell happened in the time I've been lost in limbo for an entire year.
I've mentioned it offhandedly a couple times, but; I wanted to give a sort of rework to this here Ramble Room (which I call "The 2.0 Update") because what I want exactly from this collection has changed since its release (fitting, given its rollercoaster inception). Initially I was just tossing in here whatever technically counted as storytelling (in a short-story sense), however as I got more and more into conveying an idea through flavour text of even just a doodle over my span of being an actual writer, the line between what's a story and what's just a concept blurred to such a degree that it's kinda just my writing style at this point. Also I was worried about this just turning into an art gallery, but honestly it doesn't really matter anymore (namely, not everyone has a tumblr and I don't think there's ever actually been a complaint about it).
So this 2.0 Update, I was gonna go back and add tons more art that was even remotely Soul Eater-related (which is mainly Soul variants, but around the start of me actually dipping into the fandom, I had a lot of stray idea regarding my take on the Soul Eater world having a lot of monsters), but unsurprisingly, this was going to take a lot of time. I ended up taking a break from it (because I actually wanted to pace myself properly this time), and that's when the first shovel of dirt was dug in this dumb and self-inflicted hole.
Some additional context from sometime before this became relevant: Around the start of last year (give or take), I spent a long while fussing with rereading all of my works so I could fix up the editing (and get everything up from my backlog, if I recall correctly), since naturally over time I've gotten a better grasp over the rules of English and its insatiable whims (looking at you, hyphens). The reason this matters in the context of this ramble, is that when I went to take a break, my brain is not one that can just sit still and do what it's supposed to, so I decided (after having looked at a past work for unrelated reasons) to go through and reread everything again, because not only did I consider backing up my works to be a decent idea, I discovered that I did not, in fact, have a good grasp of the whimsical rules of English when I had done the first reread (case in point, I really screwed up the hyphen thing, haha).
To keep it light, though – Basically what ensued next is that I've unintentionally created a daisy chain of tasks I feel I need to complete before I return to the previous ones, with the latest unfortunately being trying to finish rereading the Soul Eater manga, which has been going on for well over half a year now (much to my despairing confusion). And because I live spontaneously, I've now put that aside due to diving headfirst into a writing project that demands my attention lest I ignite in the flames of consequence like a vampire being thrust upon the doors of a thematically-appropriate church (translation: I'm very passionate about this story for some reason, so I'm going to spend most of my focus writing it until I can't anymore, and then I'm going to read, read, read until my eyeballs fall out).
There's still a lot I'm figuring out about the direction of this collection (I'm always figuring things out), such as do I want to break some things down into smaller collections or standalone works (namely I've since embraced genuine rambles, and chapters like The Bunker brought into question how low should I consider a snippet's word count for it to become its own work when I grow too attached to it), and should I just go whole-hog with putting every piece of art I've done related to Soul in here even if it doesn't have any real words or meat to it. Also what to do with other characters since I (mostly) shied away from anyone who isn't Soul, or by extension Maka or Wes (Stein is definitely getting his own collection, not sure what to do about Kid, though).
So yeah, that's where I'm at, haha. Never stopped writing and drawing, things just kinda... ended up in limbo, haha. Genuinely, the troubled creation of the Ramble Room I think is still rippling out the effects of how much had changed after I'd been obsessed at the time with it being the "42nd published work" to the point of causing a fic backlog to begin with (it was never the 42nd, by the way, the numbers don't actually matter. It mattered to me at the time, though, because it was originally going to be the scrapped multi-chapter story I mentioned when the Ramble Room was finally all posted), but it is what it is. Not actually really all that stressed about this void space I've ended up in again, just won't be surprised if I don't return to getting this thing actually updated another year from now, even if I will cry myself to sleep when I end up not having finished rereading the manga in an entire year.
Anyway, thanks for listening. Those of you who've enjoyed the Ramble Room (and my other works!) make me a happy li'l guy. At least my Resbangs were finally released, hahaha.