Beam's Blog of Writing and Other Things.

Debated what my first fanfic blog post should be about, then I remembered this lovely little piece and decided to discuss it, controversy it caused be damned. I do like it quite a lot, and the reaction to it overall was positive, so here's a quick look at what went into the short piece "Like Glass".

I suppose before I discuss "Like Glass" itself, I should discuss what inspired it; namely, my dislike of HF True and how I felt it was lacking in several aspects. Now, don't get me wrong; if you like HF True, I'm fine with that. It's just, in general, not my preferred ending. In fact, I think both endings of HF are horrible, but I'll get into more detail about why with HF Normal when I do a blog post about "When It's Spring Again".

So, HF True. What did I dislike? Well, the obvious: the sugary sweet happy ending seems too much of a contrast to the rest of the tone of HF, for one thing. It's such utter mood whiplash for me that I couldn't get into it because I was still too busy bawling my eyes out over Ilya, and even once I got past my knee jerk reaction of "HOW CAN THEY BE SO HAPPY ILYA JUST DIED" I never really warmed up to it. But my biggest issue of all with HF True? The complete and utter lack of mention of the people who died. Saber, Ilya, Archer, God knows how many innocents Sakura's shadow devoured while it was running loose on the city... no mention of that, not even a single line, anywhere. I know it's two years later, but really? You can't briefly mention visiting a memorial dedicated to the deaths or something?

And then, enter "Like Glass". Born on a simple premise: what if Sakura truly wasn't happy? What if the guilt and the loss was too much for her to bear?

The first draft of "Like Glass" had Rin alive and well, and followed off the end of HF True where Rin asks Sakura if she's happy. Originally, Dark Sakura acted as something like the evil within, preying on Sakura's doubts and unhappiness, and generally being an annoying nag of darkness that despite herself, Sakura couldn't quite ignore or dismiss, and kept going back to again and again. If there's one thing I do regret with the final draft, it's that I lost Dark Sakura.

However, the flow wasn't right, and despite how I felt that Sakura should feel some guilt, I needed something to break her. I needed something to push her over to edge, to break her back, to get her to well and truly shatter to such a point that she would question things.

So, I killed off Rin. Shockingly easy to do; let's face it, Rin realistically shouldn't have survived HF, and the only reason she probably did was because if she died, Sakura would have utterly snapped and HF would have had the most epic downer ending of all time.

Ghost Rin herself was very easy to write, and originally I planned to end "Like Glass" with her accompanying Sakura on a bus, and the moment that bus crossed the Fuyuki border, she faded away. The decision to include instead Sakura seeing her as she would have been in HF True was a last minute thing, and amused me as a shout out to the route.

And so, there you go. Not much meat on this one, but "Like Glass" is short, only five pages, and was written in about half an hour. Hope you enjoyed, and feel free to request a story.

- Beam (really needs to do a blog on her feelings for HF, one of these days)