Anghraine

2020 fic writing post!

2020 was not my most productive year, but apart from the general state of 2020, I had a lot to do for my PhD and sleeping problems, so … /shrug. Anyway, this year—

- I got inspired by my “eh” feelings about TROS to outline a big chunk of my f!Luke series, and after (I think) four years of no updates, wrote some eighteen and a half chapters on The Jedi and the Sith Lord in something like six weeks. It’s now 67k.

- I updated my very niche Guild Wars 2 fic, pro patria, a kind of fragmented AU in which the “Missing Sister” option to say that the PC/Deborah are proud Ascalonians has a major effect on the PC’s character and story. I got Althea through a bunch of Ebonhawke/Fields of Ruin stuff, which was 50% of the motivation for writing it at all. It’s now at 89k.

- I finally finished the gift of men, the Eldarion/Faramir-and-Éowyn’s-daughter fic that has been rolling around my brain/Google Drive for years. It’s only a little over 1k, but I was really glad to get it finished and posted.

- I was overpowered with Ascalon/fuck the Searing feelings while playing the original Guild Wars and wrote a fic about the Prophecies PC’s last day (creatively called the last day) before the Searing. It’s also just over 1k and almost nobody read it, but it was really for me, so that’s okay.

- I updated tolerably well acquainted, my canon-compliant book-only P&P fic about how Elizabeth falls in love with Darcy from Pemberley onwards. Lydia just ran off with Wickham and Elizabeth reunited with Jane; I wrote about half of another chapter, but didn’t finish it. The fic as a whole is now 27k, which is kind of astounding to me tbh.

- I’d always thought of my Éowyn-meets-f!Faramir fic, we also are daughters of the great, as a one-shot, but got inspired by their canon scenes to take it further … and then got waylaid by Merry feelings? I don’t know. I also wrote about half of another chapter of this one before exams struck, so that’s partly done. I’d really like to get to the hair mingling scene! Someday. It’s 4800 words.

- I haven’t posted much of it (just this) or named it, but I started a fic about Darcy’s family (canonical and head-canonical) reacting to his engagement to Elizabeth/Elizabeth herself. It’s part of the tolerably well acquainted continuity, I think, and a kind of fun experiment with different voices. It’s 1500 words so far.

- I started a fic about Faramir’s birth and early childhood, but it stalled partway through dealing with tiny Faramir’s first dream of Númenor. I might get back to it someday. It’s 1300 words.

- I also brainstormed a Star Wars/Dungeons and Dragons fusion where Anakin is an aasimar (as are Luke and Leia), but the composite setting drifted far enough from either that it became an original fic in a universe powered by the blessings/curses of the gods. It follows a sorceress of the god of the Void who takes on the care of a troubled demigoddess. I wrote a ton of background material, but only 1200 words of actual fic.

- After only cutting things out and fixing the gaps for years, I wrote two full chapters of my original fantasy novel; I’ve decided to take out a big chunk of one of them, but even so, it’s very satisfying, and (after a lot of cuts) brought the whole thing to 72k.

And I think that’s everything!

This is niche even for me, but ... I've got this whole concept for an AU of my own Guild Wars 2 fic (which is also slightly AU and pretty specifically tailored to my interests). The new AU is not just AU in the sense that it's not consistent with the previous fic, but also ... the characters, even original characters, of the first fic all exist, it deals with similar concerns, etc etc, but a different person is the main character of the game's storyline (while Althea, the main character/PC in pro patria, becomes the love interest).

Mostly this is because Althea had the noble origin/storyline, which can be a bit obnoxious at times, and I find the street origin/storyline much more potentially interesting these days. The street origin PC is implied to have extricated herself from a bandit gang, one of her friends is an open revolutionary and the other gets dismembered for crossing the gang leader, and the PC gets vengeance through helping plot and carry out the extrajudicial murder of said gang leader.

Oh, and I always choose the backstory where your sister was a Seraph (they're a mix of soldiers defending the country and police) who got ambushed in a brutal raid and whose body was among those that couldn't be recovered or identified. But that means my character was at one point a bandit with a sister in the Seraph, and I thought these two sisters who grew up in profound poverty taking these opposite (but both flawed) paths could be really interesting, especially if they were estranged when Deborah (the sister) got ambushed.

Anyway, I started sketching out my headcanons for this AU to sort of clear out my head, and I got reasonably far along (further in the main plot than pro patria itself has, actually). But it just became increasingly fic-like as it went on, and eventually my resolve snapped. So the point of all this:

I've gone from "ooh, Logan POV Althea fic!" to "wouldn't Logan make a spectacular disaster lesbian" in the space of 24 hours and regret pretty much nothing. Only two people have unfollowed on Tumblr, too, which is ... honestly surprising.

Re: the last post, part of me is tempted to write a little fic about this version of the PC as well, even though I've already got so much ahead with Althea ... I probably won't, but despite sticking with the Ascalonian diaspora background for both, they're pretty different in my head.

Alexandra doesn't have the same ties to Ebonhawke, though she respects and admires its people in the abstract and that led to her decision to protect the Ebon Vanguard hospital rather than the orphanage in the commoner storyline. She's scrappier—neither an aristocrat nor a spellcaster, just clever and good with machinery and tech, prepared to seize a pistol and rush into combat for the sake of her home, where Althea is a tricky, confident mage. Deborah's "death" was still devastating, but didn't re-shape Alexandra's entire view of herself and the world as it did for the much more sheltered Althea. While Alexandra has to grit her teeth when people go on around how Ascalonians need to just get over the Searing and the conquest of much of Ascalon, her feelings about Ascalon and being Ascalonian are more complicated and amorphous than Althea's mixture of pride and nuclear rage. She and Althea do both have tastes for the fancier things of life, but it's "when I can get them" for Alexandra, while Althea always can.

tbh Alexandra is a nicer person in general, but despite all this, I'm still more attached to Althea, despite how coddled and privileged much of her life has been. It's almost a pity that the noble storyline is my fave for humans—that's why I chose it for the character who got my fave class and was inevitably going to become my main, but it does give her a sort of cushion wrt everything she suffers. Hmmm.

I love GW2, but original flavour Guild Wars is just … ❤️

( tag )

I posted chapters 85-91 of pro patria. No footnotes.

I posted chapters 71-77 of pro patria.

Ch 71 footnotes:

1) she was vague on the details: the GW1 PC doesn’t cover themself with glory in their dealings with the lich; they’re constantly fooled through the first half of the game.

2) The family story went that she became an agent of the Ebon Vanguard: in the GW1 expansion Guild Wars: Eye of the North, the PC has the option to become an agent of the Ebon Vanguard, gaining ascending ’[x] Agent’ titles. The game isn’t clear about what happens after that, but I imagine them (or at least Irene) sticking with the Vanguard.

3) a guild to attack Ascalonian children: an actual ambient conversation.

Ch 74 footnotes:

1) jewelry and clothes: you can develop crafting abilities in the game, including as a jeweler and a tailor, though Althea would probably just buy things.

Ch 75 footnotes:

1) At this point in the story, Althea’s standard outfit is this; the pirate costume is this.

#the pirate section is ... well. game canon and we'll leave it at that

I posted chapters 57-63 of pro patria. No footnotes.

I posted chapters 43-49 of pro patria.

This section is the seventh cluster of seven chapters a piece, and each of those has seven sections, and each of those has seven sentences. (I draw the line at seven words a sentence :P)

Ch 49 footnotes:

1) the Tyrian Explorers’ Society: an organization that, in-game, sends you congratulations/thanks when you finish exploring a zone.