Afterword

Hey, Lobsterkarian/Karian here!

If you’ve read everything (or most) up until this point, thank you so much for reading!

If you haven’t, thanks still for coming! I highly recommend going back and starting from the beginning! But if you just want to hear my thoughts and incoherent rambling, then you’re welcome to do so~

At first, I didn’t intend to write anything for the contest I wrote this novel for. I was writing another story beforehand. But something called to me to write here, and so here I am. I didn’t have any ideas at first, but then it almost literally came to me in a dream—a daydream, more like.

Scenes just coagulated in my head. I thought of the idea of flying. Falling from the sky. Guy catches the girl mid-fall like it was a Makoto Shinkai film. Romantic. And then ta-da! Crashing Into You was born (under extensive peer review from my friends first, of course).

I wrote this story as a standalone, but wanted to leave it open for further stories should I come back to it. Overall, I’m happy with how it turned out… though I did have some ideas that didn’t make it into the final story. Maybe I’ll write them in a future sequel. Maybe I’ll write an entirely new story around the concepts. Maybe I won’t. Either way, I’m good with how the story ended for now.

The conceptual level

I wrote the story with an approach to “discovery” in mind. This is something I enjoy when I read/watch/play fantasy stories. Even some of my favorite isekai stories approach discovery in a way I love.

A lot of stories portray the fantasy world as a thing to “overcome”. Many elements become roadblocks and challenges for the protagonists to defeat.

I didn’t want that for my story. Instead, I wrote the world as “a thing that just is”. I wanted Haruki to discover all the little quirks and eccentricities of this world and its people—not to defeat or completely understand them—but to experience them. Much like our own world, if you were to put a guy from the past into our present reality, I’m sure he would find some things strange and magical. But to us, what is weird and magical to him, is just something we take for granted everyday. That’s the feeling I wanted to express.

I also wrote the story with one girl as the main romantic lead, but I did want to dance with the idea of having a second one as part of a pseudo love triangle. If you read a part of my other story, you can tell I love Macross. It’s in my blood. Help.

Future concepts that fit the mold

If ever I write a sequel, there are a few ideas circling in my head that I wanna explore.

Things like more otherworlders coming in. Imagine Haruki dogfighting with Zeros, or Hellcats. Maybe the Red Baron comes in as a flaming skeleton pilot. Perhaps in the future, they’ll build their own planes and Haruki can have haremette wingmen! Sky’s the limit when you can write anything on paper.

I would also love to explore the stories of Marina, Flare, and Anemone more. I’d also love to explore stories of other characters. I would also like to think of a brand new threat that the heroes have to face. None I can think of right now, though.

Last stuff

Thank you for reading Crashing Into You!

Fun fact! No matter the co-pilot, the subtitle is always true. In a sense.

Anemone is a literal princess. Flare is a pirate princess. And Marina… is a princess among commoners. So the co-pilot is always a princess.

I thought the idea of having a different girl in the co-pilot seat having different dominant powers was cool. It was like having a “loadout” in video games before you start the battle. Eventually I ended up kinda melding concepts, but I think it worked better in the final product.

But really. Thank you so, so much for reading. I love writing, but I find greater joy when people read my stuff, because books are there to be read, not just to sit because I wrote it!

Tell me what you think of the story with comments or a review! I’d love to hear what you loved about it, what parts jumped at you, and what you’d like to see more (or less!) of. I’m a little shy, but I’ll try my best to keep your inputs in mind and improve my next story!

Lobsterkarian, over and out!