What inspired you to write the counts world?
Oh, I haven't thought about this in a long time.
So I was a fan of Paper Mario from the beginning. I loved Mario RPG so much as a kid, so that when they came out with a new RPG-style Mario game on the N64 I jumped right to that, and then TTYD after that. Super Paper Mario was a game I'd been looking forward to for over a year by the time my household got a Wii, and that was the first game we got for it. I was obsessed with the story and played the game as often as I could between classes because I just had to see how it ended.
When I finally beat it I felt... sad. I didn't like the ending. I cried. But also I was so bummed out by it that I didn't stay to the end of the credits so I didn't see the final scene of Blumiere and Timpani standing together on the hill, so it felt like they just died or something and feeling otherwise was wishful thinking. But even after I saw that, I didn't feel satisfied. I get that it was thematically appropriate, and I could appreciate that, but a story I'd loved so much left me feeling so hollow. (I actually love the canon ending now and it doesn't make me feel bad, so the fanfic accomplished its original goal.)
So I did what anyone unsatisfied with canon material would do: I turned to fanfiction. The one that left the biggest impact on me was LazloTitan's "Odium and Love." I actually don't remember anything about it at this point, but at the time I loved it. And I thought about what I would do if I were going to continue the story my own way.
I love cartoons. At the time, I was really interested in TV series that were based on animated films and took place after the movie ended, such as Disney's Aladdin or All Dogs Go to Heaven: The Series. And I decided I could get all of my bad feelings out by writing a few stories that took place after the game like it was one of those shows. I asked myself what would that look like? What might the characters be doing?
The last piece of inspiration came from Mimi's line at the ending scene, when she said, "He's right, Nassy! We still have each other! We can still build the count's world! So, c'mon! Big smile!" The story would then be about them, trying to build a world of love that the Count had wished for. So I put together a scenario of that happening.
(As an aside, I do have all of the events for how Bleck returned, why Dimenio is alive, and the other loose ends planned out, even though it hasn't come out in the stories yet.)
kianamaiart
gummygunk
origamiaround
