so a lot of you may be wondering why i decided to end classmates that way, why each chapter was a sentence, and why i made a sequel. so here is the explanation. please read the story first, and don't just skip here for spoilers! thank you <3
classmates ending:
i find it cheesy when stories end happily. there are some stories that where happy endings work. and there are some stories where if it ends happily, i go "what the fuck??"
i really think it depends on the characters in the story. if this is a fic where one of the characters is depressed, but they're willing to get better and they're getting help in the story, i think it's perfectly okay for it to end happily.
or if it's just a fanfiction in general when there's no depression, and it ends with them getting together, that's good too. but i still have lots of respect for the authors who aren't afraid to have them not be together in the end. i think ive read one one-shot that ended like that.
but everything else ends with them together. which is fine, but i would like to see some variety, and i would not like to see happy fucking ending for everything.
and going back to the depression thing, i feel like dan in this story is just too far gone. the way ive written him; he does not want help, he won't accept help.
i did not explicitly say this- a lot of it is just inferred about the way his character acts. basically in this fanfic, dan feels very alone, and phil is his only outlet. the only thing that makes him happy. when dan's parents cut him off, and get more abusive and agressive towards him, he just can't take it anymore.
i didn't want this to be cheesy, and i really didn't see a way that dan could get all better, just like that. it would be unrealistic. i hope you understand at least a little better now why i ended it the way i did.
sequel:
sequels tend to be cheesy. im putting that out there. i know that. a lot of the time when people see that there's a sequel, they go, "ugh why did they have to make a sequel- it was fine the way it ended."
and i know the story could've thrived just as well without a sequel. this one was more of a personal decision to start off. but i didn't do it just for me. allow me to explain.
when i read fanfictions where someone dies at the end, i want closure. i want to know what happens when someone finds them, or about the funeral, whatever. i want to know what happens afterwards.
and since this entire story is in dan's point of view, i didn't want to randomly switch to phil's. that wouldn't mess it up, and ruin the flow of the story.
i definitely wanted to cover what would happen after this, and i didn't want to do an epilogue because i didn't do a prologue, and each chapter is supposed to be you one sentence, y'know?
i decided to make a sequel, but i decided to make it shorter because all the audience needs is a little closure, to know what happens. so i decided to only make it 100 sentences rather than 200. i skipped a big chunk of time because the important parts that needed to be covered (at least to me) were what was directly after what happened, and a little later on at the funeral, as well as a brief description of his general life after.
im not going to give away what happens in the sequel, but that last chapter was supposed to be the story coming to a close. it was the end of not only dan, but of the series.
and that is why i made a sequel.
chapter setup:
there isn't really much that needs to go into this one. there was a story by @lashtonvevo called bus stop which i read a while ago, and fell in love with. i thought the way she set up the chapters was interesting, so i did the same thing.
and while that may be true, i think the setup definitely aided in how i was aiming for the story to not be a lengthy fanfiction, but just to be brief and give you the main details- as if you're not really living through it, but you may be hearing of it or something like that.
i hope you understand all the reasons why did these things, and i hope you really love my story, because i do. and i love you for reading it!
<333
P.S. thank you all so fucking much for 225k reads and 7k votes. it honestly means the world to me. i know this number will only continue to grow, and i am so grateful to have you guys in my life.
i know i can't keep updating this saying thank you all the time, so here is my official thank you, for however many reads/votes/comments this has at the time you're reading this. it means so much. thank you thank you, thank you!!