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Hello everyone!
For those of you that aren't reading EPPE, this is probably the first time you've heard from me since I put Pillars of Hope on Hiatus back in September 2024.
Some of you may know, but for those that don't, PoH was my first fic in the BNHA/MHA fandom. I went into this story without any plan and it really shows at the beginning. I did really enjoyed writing this story, and I absolutely loved the OT4 of IzuOchaMomoKyo. There hasn't been a day that's gone by that I haven't thought about this ship and what I wanted to do moving forward with PoH. I had a whole bunch of ideas that were continuously changing and I found myself scrambling to try and make them all work. The biggest thing I regret in PoH is how I handled a lot of the original storybeats, especially when it came to the villains. Sure, I changed how Izuku tackled everything when he got Blackwhip first, but I feel like I could have done so much better. I also felt like I had him unlock Stockpile way too early into the story. The villains were kept almost word for word to canon, with the only exception being Eri being rescued early, which would have changed how everything up to Kamino and post-Kamino played out. Of course, this is only a few issues I had with the story itself. These issues continued to nag at the back of my head as I was writing, especially since I was trying to pump out almost 9-10k word count chapters on a weekly basis, on top of writing for EPPE which was 5-6k word count each week. I spent a lot of time writing for both stories, hitting over 600k words in total in a single year, which is an absolutely crazy amount. As far as I know, there is only 5 other writers that I have met personally that have hit those numbers.
So why am I mentioning all these things and posting a new chapter?
Well, that's because I wanted to inform all the people who are looking forward to me continuing this fic. I have decided to take a step back from writing as much as I did because I was adding so much unnecessary stress on myself to try and deliver a chapter each week. This was also adding more stress onto my Beta Reader, especially with how long the chapters were, and with trying to keep up with two different stories at the same time. Does that mean this is the end for Pillars of Hope? In a way, absolutely not. Because of how unhappy I am with the beginning of the story, I decided that I wanted to go back and fix a lot of the issues I had. This resulted in me thinking about how many issues I would be fixing, which would effect how the story is told in the later chapters. So this led me to the idea of actually rewriting the story from the beginning, but with some different goals in mind.
I call it a rewrite, but I do believe the story would be changed enough but stay relatively the same that it would be a completely new story. The ships would be the same, including but not limited to: IzuOchaMomoKyo, KatsKya, HimiMel, and InkoNem. The base idea of the story would stay the same, with Izuku having a supportive mother in Inko, a supportive brother in Katsuki, and unlocking Blackwhip first when receiving OFA. He will still meet and save Himiko before UA, which in turn has her join Class 1-A with the rest of them. Izuku, Ochako, Momo, and Kyouka will meet before Izuku receives OFA, which means that the relationship will feel a lot more natural compared to Izuku, Ochako, and Momo knowing one another for over a year and Kyouka knowing them for a little over two months. I also want to explore more characters throughout the story, including Toshinori, Inko, and Nemuri, as I feel like I focused too much on just the Polysquad and KatsKya, while everyone else was kinda forced into the background and brought out when I felt like it. I also want to change up many of the original storybeats, maybe not to the extreme of what I did in EPPE, but I do want to change it up so it doesn't follow the railroad that is canon. Of course, many of the storybeats would still be the same, like the EE, USJ, SF, Internships, etc etc, but everything will be different enough to be interesting.
One of the biggest things I want to focus on with the PoH rewrite is shorter chapters. PoH's original goal was 8-9k chapters throughout the story, and that was a lot of words to try and pump out every week. I learned over the last year that writing and reading shorter chapters is so much more comfortable, and I'm not scrambling around to try and reach a word goal that I set for myself. I also think that I keep my focus a lot longer with shorter chapters because I don't find myself needing a break throughout them or getting distracted when reading. This definitely shows in EPPE and how much better my writing has improved. I don't feel like I'm forcing the story to happen, and will take multiple chapters if I need to for a single day, unlike how PoH, which was mostly 1 chapter is 1 day.
If you have made it this far, thank you for reading! If you have enjoyed PoH, I'm so happy you did! If you are looking for more of my writing, please feel free to check out my current main fic called Exquisite Porcelain & Polished Emerald! If you want to chat with me on discord, feel free to join Green Tea Infusions in the link below, where you'll be able to ask me questions directly or even comment about what you liked/disliked or just chat with some wonderful people of the community!
As of right now, I do not have a schedule or a set date of when the PoH Rewrite will happen, but I am hoping to have it start sometime in the New Year!
And to finish off this year, I want to wish everyone a Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! Here's to 2025 and all the new opportunities it will bring!
Love you all!
- SteveEH