I am someone who reads a lot of fanfiction. It has been one of my main pastimes for several years at this point, and even then I have engaged with it since I was a child. I have memories of my older brother seeing my computer tabs and asking me what "archive forum" was (he had only been able to see the name "archive of our own" in passing before I hid it, and as a result had got the name wrong) and why I had so many tabs of it open. Consuming a piece of media is one thing, however fanfiction is another thing entirely. Seeing others expand that world. Seeing that relationship that never went anywhere in canon, finally coming to fruition. Just getting to continue to look into that universe in order to fill that hole that formed when I reached the end. At one point in time, it felt like pieces of media were their own universes, and it felt melancholic to see them come to an end, for that story to come to an end and to never be able to experience any more of it. I will be the first to admit I get too attached, too easily.
Nowadays, I mainly read fanfiction of the Touhou Project, considering it is an active fandom, that I know the source material of and enjoy said source material, and its cast is almost entirely composed of women, which not only just feels more pleasant to read about, but spares me from having to read about heterosexual relationships. As a girl of admittedly-questionable sexuality, I have quite frankly gotten a little bit tired of men in media. Men being the badass hero. Men being the badass hero who gets with the girl, because of course he does, he's the badass hero. It has gotten to the point that, more often than not, I feel annoyed seeing straight relations depicted in media altogether. I'm sick of the same formula. I'm sick of the guy being at the center. I just want to see women doing something cool for once, without it having to lead to her trying to impress the badass guy who's her sidekick or whatever. So a piece of media that has an all-female cast is a breath of fresh air, a place where women don't exist and do everything for the benefit of some strongman.
At some point, I had heard of a lesser-known Touhou character called Hatate Himekaidou. After having recognised her as the girl on the cover of one of my favourite albums of all time (DEGENERATE DANCEHALL by Alstroemeria Records), I next discovered that she was a shut-in who spent all her time on her phone in order to write newspaper articles, which was seemingly overshadowed by her fellow tengu newspaper writer, Aya Shameimaru. As someone who, herself, was, is, and has sporadically been a shut-in for a large portion of my life, I was immediately drawn to her. Naturally, I turned to Archive of our Own to look for fanfiction of her. Specifically, fanfictions shipping her with Aya, which happened to be the majority of fanfictions starring her. I read almost every single one there was to read, immediately moving from one to the next. I was hooked.
As it happened, another Touhou character also caught my eye: Seija Kijin. A rebel who tried to start a revolution, simply for the sake of it. Portrayed as an absolute contrarian who wanted to flip society itself upside down, to make the weak strong, who despite being much weaker than almost the entire cast of the games, managed to get a bounty on her head. Well, I'd been screwed by the system my fair share at this point, felt screwed over plenty by society and ultimately gravitated towards this portrayal of this small-fry loner who managed to take a stand against the system to the point of making an enemy of everyone in her land, and revelling in it. You can guess where this, too, lead me.
Which lead one fanfiction in particular to catch my eye. A fanfiction starring Seija Kijin as the protagonist, in a relationship (romantically, I assumed) with Nue Houjuu. A change of pace from the typical Seija x Shinmyoumaru that dominated the works starring her. And, notably, listing Hatate x Aya as a ship. It claimed to take place in a cyberpunk alternate universe rather than the Gensokyo everyone knew, another attractive trait, having already "finished" an unfinished work featuring Hatate x Aya as the focus where everyone was just a regular human in high school. As much as Gensokyo is an interesting setting, it's nice to change it up.
It was unfinished. Fourteen chapters, out of the planned nineteen. Last updated... eighth of February, twenty-fifteen. Orphan account, means I have no clue if the creator is still around, can't know, right? Those odds aren't good. Those odds spell hurt. Not knowing if there's a creator I can pester to finish it, so old that they'd probably never pick it back up even if they were around to see my pestering to begin with, so old that all hope that it'll ever be complete is nihil.
Fuck it. I've been through this tango before. I'll feel a little sad that I never got to see it completed, and then move on. That's how this goes, right? The life of a fanfiction reader, never truly knowing if that work you're attached to will ever be complete, not knowing when. Coming back every week, every day, to the same fandom page, hoping to see that it has a new chapter. Sometimes it gets completed, sometimes it drags on for so long that you don't know when it'll end, sometimes you don't see it again, and you look for it and find out the creator hasn't touched it in months, and maybe it'll come back one day, or maybe it won't. Such is life, I'd had years to get into that rhythm.
So, bracing myself for the cold emptiness that comes with the story I got so attached to being incomplete, I click on it. chasers of the end.
Immediately, I'm hooked.
The take on everything, so new. I hadn't been much into cyberpunk up until this point, having only seen The Matrix, Serial Experiments Lain, Akira and maybe Blade Runner 2049 as I don't recall when exactly this even was. The high-tech world blended with the trashiness, of Seija coming back to a crumby apartment, one in a run-down block populated with misfits like her. With not even a trace of the characters everyone knew, the small-fries dominating the limelight. Seija Kijin and Nue Houjuu are the protagonists of this world, with Nitori being a great help to Seija in terms of supporting her schemes, in part due to an accident that is left rather ambiguous, mysterious. Almost immediately going to drink with Yuugi Hoshiguma, who discusses Parsee Mizuhashi (another favourite of mine). Aya and Hatate, while not appearing too much, actually playing a critical role. Getting their own little segment showing what happened to them.
And apart from that, not just the odd choice of characters that chose to completely skip the ones everyone knew, but the characters themselves. Seija Kijin became a bipolar hacker, seeking to plunge Gensokyo into anarchy for the fuck of it. Nue Houjuu being a mysterious mercenary, former assassin, being able to change her form and using aliases, but freely showing her true self to Seija. And, of course, they're both trans. Nitori, too, with Seija threatening a bar bouncer for not letting Nitori use the women's bathroom. Seija's preference for a flip-phone rather than a smartphone. The fact that she's a seventeen year old that somehow has her own apartment, is able to live autonomously, with no mention of her parents. How she got arrested as a teenager, fourteen years old, for stealing and underage drinking. How Seija and Nue's relationship develops. Their small, cute little moments. Their excitement when things go right. Their little quirks, like Nue correcting Seija's typos every time they chat. When Nue lets Seija stay over after her keys are stolen(?) during a manic episode, and they lay in bed, where they both say each other's names and realise it's the first time they have, so they lie back-to-back practicing them. Seeing their relationship blossom.
I could go on all day, listing just the scenes I like. I might as well just copy and paste the damned work here if I were to do that.
The way that technology was described baffled me. How they had rigs that connected them directly to the medium (also referred to as cyberspace). How they could buzz in or out of it, they could backflip and float up to nodes of code. Code being ice, ice that they could scrape through, turning into lines of code weaved together that you hack by unravelling. This may all seem like the standard affair to anyone familiar with cyberpunk, especially written cyberpunk, but I wasn't. I hadn't done cyberpunk. Not cyberpunk like this, anyway. I'd seen the sexy fight scenes of The Matrix, whose world otherwise resembled ours (apart from the scenes that took place outside of the Matrix, which took place in a world so far removed from ours it's incomparable). I'd seen the sci-fi horrors of Akira, as Tetsuo was transformed into a flesh monster, even with the cyberpunk-esque setting. I'd seen Lain, which was all cyber and no punk, and still for the most part took place in a world not too far removed from our own, aside from the Wired.
But to see it done like this? To get my first taste of a true cyberpunk setting? Where corporations control the city, where we have tall neon skyscrapers and slums where punk kids try to hack the powers that be to play revolutionary? To read descriptions of technology so different from ours, yet so similar, and to see that technology weaponised by some small-fry loner to take down the giants that ran the system? It was enthralling. It was beautiful, addicting.
Honestly, it felt like a wish come true for me. Starring my favourite characters, a spin-off of my favourite series, taking place in such an interesting setting, introducing me to cyberpunk as I should have known it. More than that, though, I wished I was there. I wish I could have a friendship like they had. I wish I lived in a cyberpunk world like they did. I wished I could be the stimulant-addict, teenaged loner punk misfit girl taking down the corporations that run society, tearing down society itself in exchange for anarchy, leaving my hovel of a brutalist apartment block to walk around the street with a coat full of weapons to go hack into the powers that be that I felt had trodden on people for too long.
I'll be the first in line to admit that I'm fucked up. So scenarios where things are worse appeal to me. The setting reflecting my mind. No sunlight, just as there's no light in my life. I thought that to myself a lot this past day. That the sun is too bright, that it feels like an insult because it's a mocking reminder of what I can never have in my life. In any case, the settings that reflect my turmoil bring me... comfort, to an extent. Cyberpunk feels like wish-fulfilment to me.
The fact that the main characters are trans girls, something which they are not defined for yet can just find each other and finding accepting people in spite of, while being accepted and accepting themselves without so much as a thought about it, going without saying, with my views on Seija's mental illness also being rather similar in regards to these. The part where Seija tells Nue how she forgot her medication, and Nue just expresses surprise that she doesn't carry it on her, without any judgement, without malice, was shocking the first time I read it. Seeing these two traits that I shared and caused me significant personal difficulty be accepted by those around them (well, aside from the bouncer), to not be a big deal to others (as it is in our current climate), with them being able to accept themselves and for it to not get in the way of social interactions and friendships, was mind-blowing to me, even taking into account that this was a fanfiction, written by someone who was both trans and neurodivergent. Seija Kijin both had problems that were similar to mine, and lived everything I have wanted.
So: Gensokyo, in this world, is a cyberpunk city run by four AIs who run the corporations that run the city. The AIs who run the corporations Yakumo and Eientei, in particular, are the ones known to Seija, and her targets. She advertises herself as a cybermercenary willing to take on the most dangerous work in order to lure the AIs to hire her. She has a program up her sleeve, one that she can plant in one corp's servers to let them know that the other had been there, but lays dormant, so that she's long gone by the time it's activated. Commit corporate espionage, plant the program halfway through, get out of dodge and scrub all traces of herself from her employers' system via another program Seija has in store, and wait for the program to activate and watch the powers that be tear each other apart. A nice, simple plan for chaos.
Their first job comes almost immediately, the Lunarian, the AI behind Eientei, wanting them to steal files from Yakumo. They pull it off with little problems, leaving their program in the ice and copying the stolen files before handing them off to Eientei. They scrub themselves from Eintei's system and consider it a job well done. Yakumo's stock takes a severe hit, and their AI, the Ancient, wants revenge, hiring Seija and Nue to pull the same routine on Eientei. Doesn't go as well, they get heard by Reisen, a subordinate deeply treasured by the Lunarian. Hatate and Aya, meanwhile, have discovered the fourth AI and Hatate is killed by her to keep her identity secret. In between Seija causing Aya to move out of her apartment due to going too far in trying to get information about the AI while she was grieving, and suffering from a manic episode during which her apartment keys are, apparently, stolen and she has to spend the night with Nue, the Lunarian vows that those who killed Reisen will not continue to live. At the same time, Nue suffers from guilt over the murder to the point that Seija promises that she won't have to kill anymore.
The AI behind Chireiden, the third AI and company here, hires the two for a run on Yakumo, during which Eirin, the Lunarian, connects the dots. She launches an assault on Yakumo in an attempt to kill Seija and Nue, who are gapped to Chireiden, which is the Ancient's signature power. They talk to Satori, "the Telepath", the AI behind Chireiden, before quickly being forced to leave as Eirin continues her attempts on their lives. They encounter the AI's sister, Koishi, and almost get killed when rubble collapses on them. Orin, Satori's shapeshifting cat, saves them and sends them on a quest to get her girlfriend Okuu, who had left for some unspecified slight she thought they hated her for, to come back. They find Okuu, convince her to come back, and then encounter the fourth AI. Byakuren Hijiri, Nue's former employer, back when she was an assassin. She tells them that there are, in fact, "six - technically seven", however two are just backups, leaving five for all intents and purposes. She gives them the backstory behind the fifth, "the Administrator" Toyosatomimi no Miko, the lawmaker of Gensokyo who became corrupt. With the help of Eirin, she upgrades herself into a superior AI, and does the same with the others, including on Hijiri without her consent. Her operation is botched, and she is left with half a human mind, liable to being "overrun by (her) computer's processes". Hijiri wanted equality, so her broken mind decided this should be done via bringing everyone onto the same level and forcing conformism, causing her employees to abandon her. Including Nue. Seija connects the dots, feels betrayed by Nue due to not being told about the fourth AI and her connections, and tries to murder her, all the while Koishi (the sixth AI) finds saigyouji.exe, implied to be the seventh. Saigyouji is activated and Seija falls into a portal...
And then...
...nothing. That's the end of chapter fourteen.
For the longest time, I couldn't finish chapter fourteen. I'd get to the part where Seija points out that Nue knew the fourth AI and didn't tell Seija, and I'd stop reading there. I didn't want it to end. Knowing there would be nothing left to read, never be anything left to read, there would never be an ending...
I'd re-read it several times, and every time stop there. Always there.
Yesterday, I read the last of it. Couldn't bear it anymore. I had re-read the whole thing, again, and I was so hooked that I just couldn't resist.
The parts where Seija is trying to stab Nue, talking about how she thought she was her only friend, how she trusted her, while Nue says she still is, to not do this... it hit me hard.
I vaguely remembered looking it up once, outside of AO3, and finding a tumblr blog about it. I looked for the blog again, found it easily. And I looked through it.
Reblogs of photos the author thought were similar to those of the story, writing "SO CHASERS" in the tags. Quotes that related to it, including relating to the ending we never got to read. Posts referring to "endgame", how this happens during endgame, how this'll make sense when you read endgame. Drawings of Seija and Nue, a music playlist on a (now-defunct) site that was meant to serve as a soundtrack. I tried to dig up all the tracks in the playlist, got three that I'm certain are the ones, one that may-or-may-not-be (two songs fit the description, I picked one and hoped it was the right one) and two that I searched high and low for and failed to locate. Excerpts from the chapters that were never published. Hell, it even lead me to the author of it.
And I kinda lost it. Nearly broke down crying and felt on the verge for the entire day. I felt manic as I pieced together that playlist, dug through several years-abandoned accounts just to see if the author was okay, if nothing else. I didn't even know what I'd do if they were. Pester them about a decade-old fanfiction that they'd orphaned? Orphaning a fanfiction means completely scrubbing your name from, and giving up all control over, a fanfiction while still allowing it to stay on the archive, so that you can't even add anything more if you wanted to. It's not just posting a fic anonymously, it's completely abandoning ship. It's not even just abandonment, but disownment. And thus it was abandoned, no hope of it ever possibly coming back.
But why?
I couldn't help but be caught on that. As I was running on the emotions of having just finished, completely finished, this fic, I looked upon everything that went into it. An entire tumblr blog. An entire blog. An entire account. With inspiration materials, with quotes, with drawings, allusions to the ending, excerpts from the ending, an entire soundtrack. So much... stuff. So much effort. It felt like something they must have clearly cared so much about. On his (main, non-chasers-centric) blog, he describes it as his baby, he apologises for being behind on another fanfiction because "this lil bean of a story has taken over my life".
There was one post where someone had written that sometimes they had "such a good fanfiction idea", that they couldn't write because they knew it deserved at least sixty-five thousand words and they knew they couldn't give it that. The author reblogged it and wrote that it was the same for chasers but they were going to do it anyway. And yet... and yet. We didn't get it.
It just felt so utterly tragic. Maybe I'm melodramatic, maybe chasers really isn't as good as I think, I'm looking through rose-tinted glasses and holding a Touhou fic starring an odd cast of characters overshadowed by all the others in the series in a setting straight out of Gibson up as some magnum opus, some great work of art. But maybe I'm not, and maybe it shouldn't matter.
This was something he clearly cared a lot about, while it was running. The sheer amount of material about it speaks volumes to me. And the fact that it remains abandoned despite that, I consider a tragedy. I wish he could have completed it, I wish he could have kept his name on it, I wish it got more recognition than it did. I want to ask him why. In the last chapter, he thanked people for the support, but also said it took him two months to get motivated to write it again, and on his tumblr blog complained about a lack of readers and mentioned being spiteful over the lack of viewership. "Speaking into the void". I wished, then, that I could have been there while it was running, to show that I was reading. To show that someone cared. As if maybe that would have driven him to complete it.
And I think, even taking into account its effect on me insofar as basically providing me everything I wanted to read and introducing me to cyberpunk, that's why it hit me so hard. It wasn't just another story that had been left unfinished, never to be completed, never to be touched again. The sheer amount of stuff. The sheer amount of care he clearly had for it, and yet he disowned it. Never to speak of it again, unable to ever complete it without reuploading it, with his name no longer even on it. It just makes me so incredibly sad. I'd never seen something like that before, complete fic or incomplete fic, and I doubt I'll ever see anything like it again. I hope to god that I don't, unless I stumble upon it having already been completed.
I suppose there's a clear-cut answer for "why" is was abandoned. Loss of motivation, lack of readership. Even now, there are thirty-six kudos, one of which is me. There are three bookmarks, one of which is me. There are two comments, both by me, and there are one thousand, one hundred and eighty-four recorded hits on it, god knows how many of which are me. Only one bookmark was during its run, the other was in twenty-twenty-three. Every post on the tumblr that isn't reblogged from someone else has either zero notes or one note, and in at least one case that's just the author reblogging it from their main account onto the blog dedicated to the fic.
Then again, in another post he said to "expect more regular updates unless i give up". In November, seemingly prior to his two-month hiatus. In one of the posts, he tagged those who expressed interest. Only two named, and the post directly afterwards was the one mentioning spite due to lack of readers, but an indication that people were reading, which he was aware of and cared about enough to tag them in his reminder post. Maybe it was just that? Maybe he got readers. Granted, not as many as he wanted, and not as many as he deserved if you ask me, but readers that he was aware of, that apparently interacted with him in regards to it so he knew their usernames and knew they were interested in it. Maybe he just gave up? But then why orphan it? Why disown it?
I was nine years old when the last chapter was posted. I'd heard of U.N. Owen Was Her via the "Ronald McDonald insanity" video and I think I listened to a black MIDI version of Yukari's theme after hearing it in a video, and I had heard the name "Touhou" in passing but didn't know what it was or how to find it. I never would have found it at the time, and even then I only read, never interacted, never commented. Unless me, as I am now, somehow travelled into the past to comment on it, while somehow maintaining computer and WiFi access despite the troubles of time travel (where would I live? how would I have access to wifi? what would I eat?), there's not a chance in hell I ever would have witnessed chasers of the end during its run, let alone cheered it on.
While I feel sadness over never reading the ending, the tumblr blog said enough. Nue dies, Seija disappears into cyberspace and dies, having witnessed Nue's death. She meets the fifth AI somehow, apparently saves her which causes her to lose her mind. Nue dies for their sakes, apparently, and to save Eirin's core, who knows from what. Byakuren is killed by Eirin, Satori loses her memories, everyone mourns Seija and Nue and regrets that they never got to see the world they improved. If that sounds disjointed, it is, I'm piecing this together from tumblr posts while still on the verge of crying and having not quite come down from whatever is driving this... breakdown? Whatever it is.
More than anything, I feel sadness for what could have been. I'll sound like a broken record, but I really can't say this enough. I wish that it could have been completed. I wish it got the recognition I feel it deserved. I wish the author hadn't completely abandoned it, after they cared so much about it once. I wish it got what it deserved. Not for the sake of the reader, but as a work of art. It was a work of art, with love and care put into it, and it deserved better.
I hold no ill will towards unhappyrefrain, the writer of this work. I know his given name, or at least the one he's consistently identified himself as, but I won't use it. Even if he posted it on his accounts, I feel that more than likely crossing a line, after I've already crossed too many for me to be comfortable with myself. Despite me saying it deserved better, I don't mean that I hold anything against him for not completing it, nor do I wish that anyone else had written it instead, no matter how it would have turned out in that scenario. It feels like I just can't. I can only feel appreciation that he ever made it to begin with, and confused hurt that he left it, a sense of abandonment. He's probably somewhere in his thirties now, apparently got married. I shouldn't disturb him with my creepy ramblings and obsessions about a work he abandoned a decade ago. Yet I wish he could at least know. At least know that someone saw his vision, saw what he was working on, and appreciated it. And was effected by it more than he probably could have ever seen coming.
I'd hope it would make him feel better.
A part of me stirs, wondering if he would perhaps finish it, or give us something as a result, if I told him, however why would he? Even if my comments were appreciated rather than dismissed as some creepy stalker tracking him down to send him psychotic ramblings about a work he disowned a decade ago.
And even if he wanted to, would he have it in him? Telling someone to pick up work they gave up a decade ago feels impossible, it's too tall an order. Even if I paid. It's probably my emotions talking, still fried from having not quite gotten out of the woods and in fact having walked a bit back in just to write this in the first place, but I would gladly pay to see it completed. It'd be worth it, I think. If not for my sake, then for the sake of chasers as a work of art.
I once had a conversation with an acquaintance of mine who is also a writer, about fanfiction versus other forms of writing. He told me that (paraphrasing) he felt that AO3 did not take themselves seriously via not giving writers more ways to network or to "shill" their works. I told him that I did not care for shilling and that he was thinking about this all too deep, to which he argued that he respected fanfiction and wanted to see writers flourish. I told him that I did respect fanfiction, that some fanfictions I would pay money for and considered on par with, or better, than published novels. But that I saw it as a middle ground, where people were not as professional as he wanted it to be, who just wrote for the fun of it, where people rarely had editors or even beta readers, and when they did it was usually just them showing it to a friend. Where professionalism didn't matter and it wasn't taken as seriously compared to other forms of media, a fun hobby more than anything. And I preferred it that way, and I got the sense that most people there preferred it that way.
This has left me conflicted on how exactly to view chasers. I am torn between viewing it as absurd that I am getting worked up over a fanfiction, something which, while I personally respect it, is less serious compared to other written works. Or feeling somewhat justified, that regardless of it being a fanfiction or not, it is a work of art. A piece of writing that, even five chapters unfinished, is the length of a book (my downloaded PDF copy being one-hundred-and-seven pages long, and my downloaded EPUB copy being one-hundred-and-eighteen, yes I have downloaded copies, yes I have two of them). A piece of writing that the creator cared about at one point, cared enough to... well, I'll sound like a broken record. I've already shown what he cared enough about it to do, to say. Point is, I don't know how it fits in my worldview. I don't know how to treat it. As a fanfiction, taken less serious than more professionally written works? Bringing the question of if it even should be cared about to a significant extent, or disregarded as just another fanfiction that the author gave up on which, as an unprofessional hobby work, did not significantly matter and is silly to worry about, let alone bother anyone over. Or as a work of art, that is worth caring about and remembering, and crying over.
...do I actually respect fanfictions?
I wonder, if this was anything else, would I feel the apprehension I do over it? If we disregard my already-established moral and ethical concerns over bothering the writer, a part of me feels like it's absurd to both him over a fanfiction. As if bringing it up, as a fanfiction rather than as any other piece of media, makes it not even worth doing, because why would I go to such lengths to harass someone over a fanfiction. A fanfiction, some other. Some, in at least one respect, lesser work, in that it's typically not taken as seriously as other kinds of works, typically not meant to be taken as seriously as other works. If it was any other piece of media, would I feel differently? I doubt I would bother him about it either way, privacy-invasion is still clearly in the picture here, but would I feel differently if it wasn't a fanfiction? Would I feel less apprehensive, more justified? Less foolish?
Do I respect fanfictions? I think I do, insofar as other people do. I've felt greater emotions for them than any other piece of media aside from maybe music, no matter if I've read more fanfictions than played games, watched movies, read books, et cetera, et cetera, I don't think that particularly matters. Because I've felt more emotion and connection to them than professional works. I've cared about them more. I've followed the authors of other fanfictions, encouraging them to make more, letting them know that I care, that I appreciate what they work on. I wonder if that's ever influenced anything. I know it has occasionally. I told a writer how much a one-shot they wrote meant to me and they wrote a sequel to it. I commented on a fic that went untouched for a year and the writer responded, "I'll see if I can cook something up", and a couple days later, there a new chapter was. Whether you take that as me encouraging fanfiction writers to continue working, or as me pestering them into writing something they otherwise wouldn't want to, is up to you. I could see it both ways, I suppose, though I try to reel myself in, to not comment too much so that they don't feel harassed or pressured. Is that wrong to do? And furthermore, is that a sign of respect? Of them? Of their work? Of both, or just one of those?
Yet my mind still continues to produce fantasies of "what-ifs". Of him still coming back, finishing it and it being appreciated more now in the twenty-twenties than it was in twenty-fifteen. Strangely enough, for me at least, my mind doesn't produce any daydreams or fantasies from within the story itself. Maybe I just don't feel like I should add anything to it, even in my own head. Maybe I feel like I can't.
And then, the more neurotic part of me that's been fuelling this whole escapade tells me that if I gave him any indication of any of this, so much as a reminder that chasers ever existed, then he'd go and wipe everything. Delete the blogs, delete every post. Try to remove every trace of it ever having existed. Whether in direct reaction to my behaviour, as I understand I've (at least to me and my moral compass) committed several gross invasions of privacy and probably elevated myself to at least a borderline stalker at this point no matter how harmless my intentions are. I may not know him as a person, or have doxxed him, but I certainly would feel very disturbed if someone dug through several different accounts of mine, accounts that hadn't been active in years, just to find out which one I currently use, whether it was just to see if I'm okay or for any other reason, nor if they dug through decade-old posts of mine to find out every single detail about something I'd made (assuming I had made anything of value at that point). Or maybe he'd wipe it just out of wanting rid of it. He already orphaned it, after all. Other chasers-related posts are still on his main tumblr, however the playlist in particular was nowhere to be found on it, so there is some level of trying to be rid of it. I worry I'll cause that just by writing this, just from creating some indication, however obscure or minute, that it was ever noticed. That any of this was ever noticed, that everything that was there to publicly notice was noticed.
I think, either way, that I think too much. And that I shouldn't be theorising about the motives of someone I don't know and my only link to is reading a now-discarded fanfiction he wrote a decade ago. Or sifting through his accounts to find any trace or mention of a decade old fanfic. Or going down a rabbit hole of several of his accounts just to find one he actively uses just to sate my curiousity over a person who doesn't know me and has abandoned the one reason I know of him. Or becoming mania-level obsessed over decade old fanfictions to begin with, actually. Maybe all of this is unhealthy.
Then again, if I was mentally healthy, I wouldn't have been there to begin with.
chasers of the end got me into cyberpunk. I was into Lain, but even that didn't kickstart my true interest in it. I read Gibson now. I look at stuff and decide in my head if it's "true cyberpunk" or not. It got me into an entire genre, a genre I'm deeply immersed in and care about, a genre I want to write my own works in. And I know that, for better or for worse, I'll never forget chasers of the end by unhappyrefrain, even if I'm the only one who never does, even if unhappyrefrain does, or already has.
I know it will be forgotten, one day. It was barely known to begin with, and one day I will die, he will die, and it'll likely be lost to time. Tumblr will eventually either shut down the blogs or shut down as a website entirely, whatever comes first. AO3 will probably die at some point. There will be nothing left of any of it. And to me, that is soul-crushing. Even if the world never cared for it, the fact that one day people will be unable to, that there will be nothing left to care about, hurts me deeply.
Oh god, I'm really having an existential crisis over this, aren't I? Over this...what is this?
I'm thinking too deep about this, clearly. My emotionally unstable mind is bringing me to places not worth thinking about. I'm torn between interpreting it as a fanfiction not worth taking seriously enough to the point that it's absurd to even entertain sharing my feelings with others, with the creator, this very work feeling embarrassing just for me having written it and posted it publicly, letting everyone know just how stupidly touched I was by an unfinished Touhou fanfiction, abandoned and disowned by its creator ten years ago, letting people know just how insane I am about something that anyone in their right mind would dismiss as insignificant, in its run and even more so since its creator discarded it, to be forever incomplete. Between interpreting it as a work of art, to be respected, to be mourned that it never was completed. Between viewing it as something precious, something to be preserved and protected until the end of time, something that was deeply loved at one point by the mind who created it, something thatis deeply loved by the mind that types these words. I'm torn between the three, I guess I'm somehow all three and I don't know what to do, how to interpret it, how to act, how to live with it.
I'll get over this at some point. I hoped, by writing this, that airing out my feelings would help get me over it, but to no avail.
Maybe I'll get over it at some point, but I'll never forget chasers of the end.
When I was putting together the playlist, having realised that the hosting platform, 8tracks, had been down for months and had been written off as defunct, having been unable to find any trace of two of the tracks and not even being sure of one of them being the right one, I thought to myself that the playlist was just like the fic itself. Forever incomplete and lost to time, known only to unhappyrefrain.
I put all the songs together in the playlist, but I haven't listened to it yet. I think I'll cry if I do so.
