On The Subject Of Legacy

hey, y'all. it's been a while since i updated legacy - well over two years, in fact. the last time i used this account was in mid to late 2017. i'd have probably forgotten that i ever used at all if it weren't for the occasional email update about a new follow or favourite on a story that's been gathering dust for the better part of three years. i was content to simply let the notifications pile up unanswered, but given the attention that this story has gathered over time, i feel like i should at least give my tiny fanbase another update.

so, yeah, i'm not dead. still kicking around, somehow. when i started writing legacy in mid-2016, i was in the last year of primary school for the corner of australia i live in. i've since turned fifteen, realised i'm into girls, and (hopefully) grown into a marginally better writer and artist, in that order. while sonic is still a special interest of mine, and a series that will always be in my heart for better or for worse, i've grown somewhat distant from the franchise as new things grabbed my attention and held it tightly over the years. am i still a sonic fan? hell yeah. i love that silly blue bastard with my whole heart and soul. but it's been a long time since i've written anything with him, and getting back into the swing of writing him would be difficult. and looking back at legacy (as much as i can do so without cringing myself into the earth's core, at least), it isn't awful, per se, but the plot i had written out was extremely thin and it's pretty obvious, even this early on into a planned forty-something chapters, that i had no idea what i was doing and never really expected to pull through with it.

does this mean that legacy is dead? well, yes and no. yes, in that this is likely to be the last update that this version of the fic receives. but i'm not necessarily throwing in the towel. it's more like i've hung the towel up next to where i was going to throw it in so that it would have time to try, but despite its probable status as a future thrown-in towel, it still technically remains unthrown. did that make sense? i doubt it. point is, i'm reluctant to 'officially' give up on legacy.

the concept (sonic, or honestly just any character in a universe where it's believable - i'm a sucker for existential angst and the like - becomes partly/fully roboticised and has to adjust to an unfamiliar and threatening body) is a pretty good one that i really wish there was more high quality content of. while many a plot point was very poorly executed (74LK1NG L1K3 7H1$ 4$ $0M3 K1ND 0F C0D3? C0M3 0N. VV3"V3 4LL R34D H0M3$7UCK. 7H1$ R34LLY VV4$N"7 CL3V3R, 0R1G1N4L, 0R 4LL 7H47 D1FF1CUL7 70 D3C1PH3R) or overshadowed by less interesting bits and pieces that 12 year old me somehow decided were more pertinent to the story (it could reasonably be argued that sonic the hedgehog being granted the power to shoot lasers is a much more pressing matter than a whole paragraph of agonising backstory for my bland, one-dimensional OC), the fact remains that they weren't terrible plot points. it'd be a shame to just leave the ideas on a quite literally dusty hard drive for the rest of eterniforever. i'm not opposed to searching for the old documents and trying to get somewhere with legacy again.

i'm not promising that the story will update again. in fact, this is more of a confirmation that this version of legacy is never going to have another chapter. if i ever did get it going again, it'd be in the form of a total rewrite, to bring it up to the standard of my current writing. motivation is pretty hard for me to come by nowadays, what with that pesky bitch we call anxiety, and on the rare occasion that i write and finish something these days, it's rarely more than a one-shot with only a vague place in a timeline for an AU. and as i mentioned already, it's been such a long time since i wrote sonic that it'd take me a while to get back into the swing of his character. is it likely that i'll take the time out of my life to revisit and see through a sonic the hedgehog fic i wrote when i was 12? not really, no. don't get your hopes too high. but i'll say that it isn't completely out of the realm of possibility.

i am considering a bit of a compromise for those of you who, for god knows what reason, are still genuinely interested in the eventual resolution of legacy. i'm not sure if i still have the file, and my memory of it is shaky, but legacy did have a fully written outline divided up into chapters with a half-decent arc and conclusion. (unrelated, but i accidentally wrote 'confusion' there. sounds about right.) if y'all are interested, i'll look for this outline and, if i find it, upload a summary of the original plan for legacy's story, in the case that this really is the end and nobody ever hears from me on this website again. if not, i can hardly blame anyone but myself. the story in its current form is extraordinarily lacklustre and nothing to get excited about. and hell, there's a chance that the only place the document was saved is on one of the many USB drives that i lost over the years before giving up on them for my own good. but if i get the incentive to search my crappy old computer or dusty hard drive, and i do find the plot or at least something that reminds me of what the hell it was, i'll happily upload it for the internet to behold in all its subpar glory, with the added bonus of all the painful XD-spam edited out and all emoticons now wearing B for sunglasses. call in now, get the deal. call in later, get the deal. call your mum, you've missed four texts from her. call your friends, i'm sure they'll be happy to talk to you. or just text if you can't stand phone calls, like myself. what am i on about. moving right along.

thank you to everyone who left positive feedback on legacy during its lifetime. you're all wrong, of course, but the kind words (and, on occasion, writing tips) were definitely an important boost to my self-confidence, which at the time of writing the original chapters was officially starting to fail me. thank you to every reviewer who i waited patiently for on gmail for hours after uploading a new chapter, thank you to every view and follow and favourite on the story (while it isn't an awful lot by many standards, it sure as hell was for a twelve year old on the internet), and thank you to everyone who patiently endured my 2008-esque lolsorandom attempt at a personality that i forced paragraphs of into the beginning and end of every god damn chapter. see you soon, perhaps. who knows.

if you're interested in my art (and the rare piece of writing) now that i've grown a spine, removed the stick from up my ass, and actually taught myself how to have skill, i recommend following my sorry excuse for a tumblr at zosonils dot tumblr dot com (if fanfiction somehow still detects and yoinks that link i'll find the person who decided to block them and take their bones). be warned that most of the posts are me reblogging memes about homestuck, making one-sentence posts about being nostalgic for sonic colours, and saying swear words on the internet