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hello everyone! it’s me, trip. i’m the author!
starting off with the main point: i've lost the passion that motivated me to write this fic in the first place. i still love these characters, and they’ll always have a place in my heart, but im rlly just not feral about pressure anymore. however! I know how it feels to be really into a fic, only to find out that it's unfinished. I'm still proud of the work I put into this, and doubly grateful for the positive feedback i've received! i don't want to leave anyone disappointed.
So with that in mind, i'm taking this last chapter to summarize how the story was planned to go, alongside some other miscellaneous info regarding this fic. Essentially, this is the gist of what I had in mind.
Chapter 8: seb and painter continue to have long talks while seb builds their body. They get closer together and start feeling very lgbt things about each other. Meanwhile, seb's guilt over lying to painter continues to fester, all while painter continues to suppress their grief re: their creator. They're both pressure cookers that just keep building up and building up. Painter begins to notice that they're feeling artblocked and seb finds that he can easily catch fish, but struggles to eat as it reminds him of The Horrors. For different reasons, both parties struggle to care for themselves, but they both find solace in one another. they both mutually realize that they never got to truly say goodbye to their respective families. seb promises painter that he'll take them to visit their creator's grave-all while conveniently ignoring his own family. this is not lost on painter. Meanwhile, naomi goes to the beach and finds that the old abandoned shack suddenly looks.... suspiciously lived-in.
Chapter 9: while these tensions continue to grow, a THIRD thing begins to happen- it's not just seb and painter who escaped from urbanshade. The blacksite's downfall has also caused all those damn fish monsters to be released as well, and they're starting to make their presence known. They haven't arrived at the town just yet, and it's up to seb and paint to figure out a plan for when they inevitably do. Naomi continues to investigate their place on the beach, and they lay eyes on one another. This terrifies seb, whose trust in humans has all but shattered. But it intrigues painter, who is desperate to explore a world they never got the chance to rlly see. However, they can't do squat without seb's help, and that fact only makes the latter feel all the more guilty. Seb continues to pour himself into his work in building painter's body. Painter continues to suppress. Naomi brings a camera. Urbanshade's victims swim ever-closer to the beach.
Chapter 10: seb begins to start hooking painter up to their body, and painter begins to Feel for the first time, and it's wonderful! They can't move just yet, but they can feel seb Touching them and Holding them, in a way they were never able to before. It's very objectum and very lgbt. Seb kisses painter's hand like a knight would a princess. However, seb has to quickly disconnect them because something is causing their body to malfunction, as though it were overclocked. Neither of them realize it in the moment, but it's painter's suppressed emotions- it's causing so much excess energy that anything connected to them would break after long enough. Essentially, either painter confronts their grief and they get a body, or painter continues to suppress, and nothing changes.
Chapter 11: painter confronts their grief. It's like a whole moment for them. Think toni collette in hereditary. Screaming and crying and letting it all out and all that good stuff. Painter vents so hard that it expels enough energy to knock out the town's power grid and render themself unconscious. i was gonna edit a video for this scene. After the fact, seb picks up painter's monitor, unsure if they'll wake up, and more than ever before, he feels at a loss. With no other idea of what to do, he finishes up their body.
Chapter 12: painter wakes up, but with amnesia- they can't remember anything from when urbanshade started interfering in their life. As far as they're concerned, their creator is still out there, waiting for them to come home. Paint's memory is still present, somewhere in their hard drive, but the process of confronting their grief fried their emotional processors, and should they recall anything about urbanshade right now, it would break them. Seb works to fix this, but in the meantime, he goes along with painter's perception of reality, saying that he'll take them to find their creator after fixing them up. It only worsens seb's guilt-even now, he's still lying to them. Things begin to come to a boiling point for him, but we're not quite there yet. Meanwhile, painter sees this beautiful mermaid in front of them, and begins to fall in love all over again. It's very sweet. However, at the last second, naomi manages to snap a picture of sebastian, just as he's finishing up painter's repairs, and it's the last straw that throws him over the edge. While painter is rebooting, he sees naomi with a camera, has a panic attack, and jumps into the ocean. Seb is gone for now- just in time for urbanshade's other experiments to finally make it to shore.
Chapter 13: painter wakes up, feeling better. Not good, but better. They have their memories back, but now there's a mystery girl on the beach being harassed by one of the anglers. they call the girl inside, and introduce themselves to one another. they become friends, and work together to figure out what is even Going On. Now that painter can actually use their body, they ask naomi to hook them up to it. now they can walk and dance and all those good things! Painter gives naomi a hurried explanation of who they are and who these monsters are, and finally. She feels so justified. she KNEW something was up with urbanshade, she just KNEW IT! Painter begins to talk the angler down and usher them back into the ocean, telling naomi that seb would be very very helpful right about now, if only they knew where he was. Upon learning who seb actually is, naomi begins to feel very...very guilty. In her pursuit for knowledge, she forgot that urbanshade's story was built off the backs of living things who were hurt and are very scared. This causes her to grow quite a bit, and it makes her realize that in her own way, she too is a living thing who is scared. She's 13, so like. Yeah.
Chapter 14: now these monsters are everywhere, and as much as painter and naomi are working to calm them down, the two of them are quickly becoming overwhelmed. between the three of them, sebastian is the only one who can speak fish. he's the only one who can meaningfully talk to them. The sun has risen, and everyone can see what's going on, and it's an overwhelming disaster. Everything is happening everywhere forever. Painter and naomi are cornered and it feels like the angler's about to like, eat them or something, but at the last second, seb pops out again and saves them! Woao! Seb's still quite frightened, however, and gets in between naomi and painter, as though to say "get away from them!" despite knowing that seb's a little misguided here, painter still feels a little flushed at his protectiveness. However, paint begins to clear things up. Painter tells seb that naomi means no harm, and seb brings up the picture she took, which painter did Not know about. Sheepishly, she admits to it, and apologizes. Seb realizes that he's beefing with a 13 year old, and calms down a bit. In front of him, she destroys the picture, and it makes seb remember that most humans are nothing like the ones who worked in urbanshade. It makes him start to feel a little hopeful for the future, just a bit.
Chapter 15: uhh this is just the ending bit. Seb and paint talk about their Feelings, cry it out, etc etc. seb finally gets a good cry in, and wouldn't ya know it, it helps! A lot! They also talk about their feelings in relation to. Each Other. And they confess their LOOOOOOOOOOOOVEEEE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Naomi introduces her mother to seb and paint, and she takes it... surprisingly well! painter then introduces themself (and sebastian on his behalf) to the town, who is very very kind about it. Seb still isn't ready for that kind of socialization, but seeing the video footage painter took of the townspeople gives him more and more hope, day by day. Some people need more time than others. Lastly, since seb and paint (and naomi now a little) are the only ones who know how to help urbanshade's experiments, they take on a lilo-and-stitch-esque role where they serve as the town's protectors- it's this monster of the week kinda situation where every so often, an experiment shows up, and the three of them work to carve a space for them in it. Eyefestation shows up, and instead of her melting everyone's brains, they redirect her Killing Power to invasive wildlife. So on and so forth. hooray!
other notes: this fic, and pressure overall, was one of the things that brought me and my now-girlfriend together. i cannot express enough how grateful i am for that. she drew artwork for this fic, shown below.
