im not putting my mental illness on main

this is kinda just me rambling in general but how you construct catharsis in fiction (ex: a fantasy novel) is so much different than if you were writing something based in reality (ex: an autobiography). for both, your story does end at some point because all writing has to end at some point, but in fiction it has a stronger sense of finality. like once a story ends, it ends. no matter what you come up with, the original story will never continue. but in real life, life moves on. even if you feel like an "arc" in your life is over, you do ultimately keep on living, and whatever arc you've lived through will effect you forever. that's kinda like how life works

i think ive made it personally clear that I really enjoy tragedy in fiction, and I think that "release" of that tragedy is something really clear in my work. and if I were to write rpf, that same effect wouldn't really happen. like, the real life people of ash and red are going to live their lives. even if something awful happens to them, life keeps on living, and there isn't really a "finale" until. you know.

i joke a lot about how I like making ash die in fics but I do think its really poignant when one of Red's character traits is being extremely loyal. like, what happens when a character whos used to serving others has that person gone from their lives? what kind of grief does that bring? how do they recover from that? and I think those questions are very interesting to explore in c!red because you can take it as something really self destructive (ex: outsiders!red) or someone who moves on and grows around it or somewhere in between. its fun to write, especially since red often hides against sarcasm so much its fun to explore how those emotions might manifest when sarcasm is no longer a crutch. like, ash often expresses his feelings through a shield of anger and egosim but red usually tends to be self deprecating (similar to c!branzy)