Finished Caramel Chloroform!

[jemeryl]

Caramel Chloroform: My Fuyumi/Nemuri Yakuza Fake Dating Non-Con/Dub-Con Slow Burn/Pining Angst with a happy ending! It was loosely based on The Raid 2, a violent indonesian martial arts movie. 

The first writing of this length (almost 90k) I actually finished! A huge achievement for me in many ways, not least of which is being able to wrangle that ADHD into finishing a project. (wanted to do a little writeup but didn't have time till now)

I'm largely happy with it. The pining, fluff and tension felt great. Chuffed with the fight scenes, I tried to get them all with a different style or flow, while also hooked to a story beat. Nemuri's martial arts and her quirk tactics, and Fuyumi's water/bloodbending developments are things I'm really proud of. Fuyumi ESPECIALLY deserves it.

Nailed the sex. It's the exact dub-con/dub-con-non-con stuff that I wanted to hit, with weird violent sex between two broken women who won't talk about it, but who are deeply into each other. I liked the turnabout of Fuyumi fantasizing about getting taken advantage of and then being the one to take advantage of Nemuri later on.

OTHER STUFF
1. This title makes me cringe every time I see or think it, no joke. Too late to change it, and at least it's distinct.

My original plan was for Nemuri to kill Bruiser and Hiroki, but for Fuyumi to leave Hammerhead alive. 66% through I'd gone soft on HIroki and realized that wasn't the story I'm writing anyway.

I switched to the 'things go back to normal but everyone is better.' THEN: I wrote chapter 19 (the ending as planned would've felt limp to me.) and it took me one month to get something satisfactory. I needed something that showed REAL change, not just relying on the idea that they've repented. They need to suffer and they need to change power dynamics.

That's where Nemuri taking over the clan with Hiroki as her second [with both of them, the rest of the yakuza leaders have no chance] and Bruiser and Hammerhead as Fuyumi's bodyguards came in. Hammerhead takes a serious injury to the face defending Fuyumi and, when her and bruiser have been taking bullets for Fuyumi left right and center for months, it's reasonable that they've redeemed herself.

So because it wasn't structured with all this in mind, I can see that the last few chapters might not hang well with the rest of the story. So, I'm leaving it for a long time and might come back and rejig if I have the time and energy.



She became way more my fave than I'd intended. Getting the Nana forbidden love affair in there made me feel so dang smart and I would love to write that out.



Finish up ongoings: One Chance (Snowbunny soulmates vigilantes) and Fade to White (dead dove, do not eat)

Potential stuff for Caramel Verse:
-KIV Hiroki/Nana Shimura + timeskip Hiroki/Nagant(or other OC tomiju Yaoyorozu)
-The requested Hiroki/Nemuri/Fuyumi poly smut
-The post-epiloque dubcon smutfeast

Comics
-Finish Lilac Summer
-Comic after Lilac Summer: NagantRei in a chloroform AU where Rei lived. Cameos of Fuyumi, Midnight and their adorable kid (name tbd) WHICH if anyone wants to hear more about/bounce ideas off, HMU.
-Spitballing for Icebunny comic.

~~~Big KIV for Miruyumi Week 2023~~~~

Overall, yay me! That's a big accomplishment for me so I'm going to reward myself for it.

Comments

[vriddy]

Congrats on finishing!! :D 🎉🎉🎉 And good luck with what comes next!!

[jemeryl]

Thank you! :D <3

[jajalala]

OMG I need to catch up on Caramel Chloroform! I think the last chapter I read Fuyumi and Midnight were alive and knew each other were alive so I was very relieved, but I have not actually read the last chapter(s) after that.... will be reading the cut text on this post after I find the time to read that last part.

Congratulations on finishing!!!! Especially such a long project. I tend to conceptualize long word counts as NaNoWriMo's, like how they define a 'typical novel length' to be around 50k...That makes Caramel Chloroform basically two novels in length :O. And personally I always find endings hard, but it's really satisfying after working on a project for a long time to sort of put it down like "Okay, I've put all this work in and it's occupied my life for awhile, but now I can wrap it up and let it exist as a complete piece, and move onto something new without having to look back" (not counting "looking back to reread it in a year when I've forgotten parts of it and can read like omg this was custom made for my taste").

[jemeryl]

Thank you! That's an interesting point about conceptualizing it as a NaNoWriMo, and I actually powered through a bulk of this during NaNoWriMo last year.

Is there anything about writing endings that you find particularly hard?

Also (not counting "looking back to reread it in a year when I've forgotten parts of it and can read like omg this was custom made for my taste") omg you're so right about this actually

[jajalala]

Oh goodness in terms of endings I find myself constantly lost in how to wrap things up... I feel like to me "life continues on" is my vibe, so I'm like "I could keep writing these ppl vibing forever and ever, but I need to create some sort of conclusion so that I can stop writing about this bc I might get bored just rotating it forever". Some of my works have stronger conclusions than others, and I can usually create some sort of big event that's somewhat of a turning point to be like "We do the big thing, pause, take stock, and then end the story with a vague reference to the future being better maybe". On occasion ppl have described my endings as "open-ended", which again I like as a sort of vague "they will continue even after u stop reading about their adventures there's more adventures in the future" but I think is not necessarily the most satisfying.... I also tend to not write total systemic overhauls, I think bc I struggle to envision a complete reorganization of society and kind of want the characters to remain in some stable place at the end, so even if maybe a corrupt person is cast out or there's some changes I rarely do a full revolution, which I think is not always satisfying when there are particular systems that may have led to the issues of the story.

idk it's complicated, and especially if too many threads cropped up trying to tie it all back in can get messy (or I just completely drop things) and sometimes I worry that for certain endings I haven't built up to them enough. I think I just love writing all the middle stuff, but I can get kind of lost and uncertain when it comes to wrapping things up... It's hard to say goodbye to a story!! I have not read the spoilered part of the journal post yet (still need to catch up) but is there a non-spoiler particular thing that u generally struggle with endings?