My Current Obsession
Again, to be more into fandom...
My current obsession is Ouran High School Host Club. Not so much the anime or manga itself but the AU I've built around it.
I came up with the idea over the summer for a story where one of the main characters (Kyoya) ends up in an arranged marriage (this happens in canon a lot) despite already being in love with his best friend, Tamaki, and Tamaki's girlfriend, Haruhi. Yay, poly-am relationship!
So, Kyoya drunkenly confesses to Tamaki and Haruhi that he's in love with both of them but now engaged to someone else. They have a bit of a week-long romance before he meets his new fiance.
It's a great set up. I love the angst of it all. In love with two people so he's already confused about that then add in a third person he's going to have to marry... Arranged marriages, poly-am relationship, gay panic, lots of angst. All my jams right there.
The thing is Kyoya ends up liking his fiance. A lot. Her name is Hana. He totally falls for her by the end of the two weeks she visits him during the summer. Now he's in love with three people and even more confused.
And that little bit of a story idea has blossomed into an epic AU spanning 20+ years and incorporating every major and many of the minor characters from canon. You could pick a character and a year from 2007-2030, and I could probably tell you what they're up to at the time.
I just keep expanding in every direction. First I took the original idea of the arranged marriage through several years until Kyoya and Hana finally got married. And then I kept going to see how their marriage worked out with him still in love with Tamaki and Haruhi (it ends up working great because she's all "the more the merrier" about their relationship). Then Hana gets pregnant. But whose baby is it? So much drama.
But as I was making notes for that arc, I started wondering what their friends had been up to this entire time. They were static--exactly how they had been in high school. So I backtracked through time to figure out everyone's lives. Now I have so much information on everyone. Even one-off side characters can be a part of the fun.
I just keep adding more and more. I know exactly what happens to everyone at the end of the manga. I know how their relationships develop, the problems they have, their ups and downs. Sometimes I pick a trope and wonder who gets to experience it then just go to town.
My AU is an obsession that I work on every day, building and building.
Then I came up with this idea that instead of individual stories, I could present it all as this Interactive Wiki Experience. So I've been creating this Wiki with TiddlyWiki. The point is the information from my AU is presented as already happened in the Wiki and the reader finds out the details as they explore the Wiki link from link.
I'm doing it mostly for my own amusement because I doubt it's ever finished. There's so much work to just set up the canon part without copying anything from the actual Fandom Wiki for the show/manga. Then there's the actual story part that has to be written. I'm doing it in seasons in chronological order so starting with what happens right after the manga ends.
I'm having trouble getting going with that thought because I'd rather be writing the stuff about the arranged marriage, so I've decided to do that for NaNoWriMo. If I finish it, I might just post that, but...
The more I go over my notes to make sure I have all of these random details from other characters' arcs to fill out my main story, the more I just want to incorporate EVERYTHING. The arranged marriage arc takes place from 2011-2014. So much happens to all of the main characters during that time. There's so much to work with besides what's going on with Kyoya, Tamaki, Haruhi, and Hana.
I'm thinking of just letting myself go on side tangents about the other characters if I feel like it. Just kind of pants it for the first time in a long time. Write whatever comes to mind because I doubt I ever post any of it since I really don't get involved in fandom anymore. And so far all I've done in this fandom is post one silly, little drabble, lol.
Anyway, if you read this far, you are a special kind of person. If you understood even a fraction of what I wrote, you are probably smarter than me. I plan to squee about this project a lot so feel free to ignore me when I start rambling about Ouran Host Club. Also, there will be spoilers for everything in my AU here because this might be the only way I ever tell this story.