Harry Potter fanfic author with a dedication to promoting diversity, representation and healthy relationships. I blog and write about some of the following: Wolfstar, Marauders, Romione, Hinny, SCORBUS, Femslash, POC and queer headcanons.
Hello, all. I have returned. I had a several year (unintended) hiatus from working on fanfic. But I'm fully back at it and have been posting edits of older works.
But for now it's time to discuss one work I'm editing: The Reclusive Hottie in the Attic aka my Poly Marauders story which has its 10 year anniversary this year.
It's been 3 years since I finished it. The link for it is here. I also posted an extra chapter in the form of a sort of update for readers here. I'm treating this as a bit of a supplement to that but the TLDR is: I'm editing/rewriting it in its finished form so I posted a recommendation to save the work if you enjoy in case I have to take it away for a bit.
In this post I'm going to talk about some of the changes I'm making to make the finished work feel more "whole".
Godric's Cove: I'm moving the location of Godric's Cove. Originally, my inspiration for Godric's Cove original was Gold Beach, Oregon even before I gave the town a name. This wasn't really important; I just wanted the story to be somewhere coastal and in a small town and the Oregon Coast is beautiful. It's also a terrible location for a story like this being very remote, having limited career and education opportunities, and being more a tourist trap than anything else. This is why in the current version they move to Seattle. It just made everything logistically easier. Now Godric's Cove is going to occupy the space where Port Townsend in Washington is. This is going to solve many, many problems in the narrative. The vibe of Port Townsend is much closer to what I originally wanted for the town and being close to Seattle but not too close means a lot of things (like Sirius time in Portland) can be moved to Seattle for simplicity. It also means...
The entire story is being moved to take place in Godric's Cove as I originally intended back in 2016. Now this doesn't mean trips to other places won't happen but they won't be moving anywhere. This is a pretty big deal. Beyond allowing me to give the story the small town vibes I originally wanted, this is a pretty huge logistical fix.
Changing it to Lily's grandmother she inherits the house from rather than her great aunt. For some reason, I originally wanted it to be a shock and that's why it was her great aunt. I'm changing all that completely.
I'm reworking the beginning of the story in ways that are complicated to explain. But basically everyone will be in Godric's Cove from the beginning (though all coming from where they are in the original version.)
I'm also reworking Lily at the beginning of the story to make her development feel more in line with the other characters. In the original version she's immediately queer and basically decides to be poly almost immediately and she just leaps into in a way that's frankly a little too easy. So I'm dialing it back and showing the journey in the early chapters to Lily reaching those realizations about herself. She'll still be a little ahead of everyone else but not by miles.
Consequently, Mary and Dorcas will be living in Godric's Cove and start as new friends Lily is making.
I'm getting Remus/Sirius moving way faster than in the current finished version. As I mentioned in my post, my original intention was that it was going to be 200 chapters, so I paced with that in mind. I'm fixing this and not only will James and Sirius move in fairly early on but Remus and Sirius will meet pretty early on as well.
I'm going to do some character merging. For instance Nova and Mary are getting merged (For the most part it will be Nova with Mary's name). Lily is absorbing Doris's role in Sirius's story. Most minor canon characters will get merged into more significant characters (or cut if their role is unimportant).
A big thing I talked about in my post was a desire to expand the latter parts of the narrative. As part of that, I'm reconsidering the commune. I'm not 100% on that but I may cut it both because Godric's Cove can fit the vibe to a certain extent. Also, communes are kinda bad, which I believe I did acknowledge in the story but the more I hear, the less of a good ending it feels. But that's more something I'm thinking about than a hard decision I've made.
Either way, I'm expanding the later material, especially what happens after chapter 100. There should be less time jumps and the ones that do happen should be shorter.
I think this is all the major changes I'm planning currently. I will probably discover things as I go on. Either way, I'll probably be working on this throughout the year. It would be nice to start posting the new version in December for the 10th anniversary but that just depends how far I write ahead. Originally I just planned to do a polish edit but I just felt too many things need to be fixed.
I did consider editing into material that could be published as an original work but I actually think it would be way too much work (iust figuring out how to make sense of it structurally/breaking into pieces.) It would be easier to just write an original polyamory story with no fanfic connection.
Working a bit on my Raising Harry AU again. I’m basically beefing up the main story but adding all the flashback stories I wrote into the story as memory chapters. Obviously it already had a lot of memories but I’m adding all of the ones that feature Remus and Sirius.
Anything that is just James and Lily will for now remain their own fics until I can go back and combine all of them for a James/Lily specific prequel story.
It’s all a bit complicated but the end result will be fairly straightforward.
I did consider doing a version without the flashbacks but I think it would feel too empty. It was built around having flashbacks so I think it will make more sense to just keep them and beef them up and try to make them feel more relevant.
Really surprising how little editing the text for this series needs, especially considering how old a lot of it is. Most of the editing I’m doing is more structural or just adding stuff.
Working a bit on my Raising Harry AU again. I’m basically beefing up the main story but adding all the flashback stories I wrote into the story as memory chapters. Obviously it already had a lot of memories but I’m adding all of the ones that feature Remus and Sirius.
Anything that is just James and Lily will for now remain their own fics until I can go back and combine all of them for a James/Lily specific prequel story.
It’s all a bit complicated but the end result will be fairly straightforward.
I did consider doing a version without the flashbacks but I think it would feel too empty. It was built around having flashbacks so I think it will make more sense to just keep them and beef them up and try to make them feel more relevant.
Marauders Guide to Sexual Intercourse Expansion Update:
Haven’t posted updates because I’ve been too busy working on it. I believe I should be able to finish TODAY. Unsure when I’m posting. It will take some time to prepare given the enormous amount of new chapters (27 I believe... yes, really, 27) and the fact that all the existing chapters need to get moved around and I need to look over EVERY single chapter before posting so... Yeah, it’s going to be an ordeal.
Marauders Guide to Sexual Intercourse Expansion Update:
Only 6 entirely new chapters left to write. It’s mostly editing from here on out. Unsure how long it will take to finish now but not too long. Maybe a couple of weeks? Certainly before the end of February.
Another Marauders Guide to Sexual Intercourse Expansion Update:
11 chapters, 16k ish words. Puts me at about half done for new chapters written. Feeling pretty good about reaching my spring goal. The only question is how long edits will take but I’m not anticipating edits taking long given that most of what I need to change is continuity stuff.
Another Marauders Guide to Sexual Intercourse Expansion Update:
8 chapters done, around 10k words total. The nice thing about planning to drop this expansion all at once is that I don’t have to stress about chapter length. These chapters range from about 2k words to only 800 (they average around 1300 words.)
I have 11 chapters to write before I get to the stuff I originally wrote, though there will be more new chapters mixed in with the old still. I believe in reality I have about 14 new chapters to write total, most of which should be short.
My goal remains having it done by summer but I’m secretly hoping to have it done a bit sooner than that. I think a spring release is entirely possible, if I don’t hit any major writing blocks before then.
So as promised I have deleted 3 of my incomplete works on AO3 that weren’t really getting much traffic. I had no plans to update them and I’d just rather them be gone so that no one finds them and has the expectation I might someday update them. I may someday revive them in some fashion but... not any time soon. But seriously, no one was reading them so I’m not too worried.
I have not deleted my space opera story The Legacy of the Wolf because I do plan to update/finish that at some point and I have worked on that AU in the background quite a bit.
Marauders’ Guide to Sexual Intercourse Expansion updates:
Eh, why not? Gonna make this a little more informal than my Poly Marauders updates.
So first a little perspective on how big this expansion is: Currently the published version is 14 chapters long. Right now just in terms of chapters that get us to where the fic ends right now, I have 35 outlined. Now it’s worth noting, most of the new chapters will be very short (not much more than 1k words). Just not enough meat on the bones for some of the subjects.
So far I’ve written 3 new chapters and I’m working on the fourth one, for a total of 3.6k words. Now, it’s worth noting that I only just finished working on Poly Marauders so the chapters that are written were done pretty randomly. That being said, this isn’t my only project right now so my energy is still split with other things (but not TOO many other things.)
My goal is to have this expansion done by next summer. I write around 200k words a year so 6 months is about 100k and I think that’s plenty to get this done and good amount of other stuff as well.
I have outlined to 50 chapters BUT I think I’m going to be posting the expansion once I’m caught up to where the fic already was since otherwise it would likely take more than a year for an update and considering it’s already been two years...
He's described as being small in the early books but later catches up to how tall James was at his age (and James is frequently described as tall.) So probably in the ballpark of 6'0" by the end of the series I would guess.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Remus Lupin is an aspiring author with crippling social anxiety. His best friend is Lily Evans, a polyamorous Pagan who wants to become a therapist. Elsewhere rich party boy James Potter is living his life free of any cares, accompanied by his snarky photographer best friend, Sirius Black, who doesn't believe in love. Fate brings them all to Godric's Cove, a tourist trap on the Southern Oregon Coast.
This is a story of dreams, hope, grief, and joy. A tale about finding your place in the universe and building community. It's about unity in hard times and the healing power of love. It's a tale that spans decades and continents as Remus, Lily, James, and Sirius find love and find each other to build a family of their own.
In short: It's an epic yet intimate friends-to-lovers polyamory domestic AU.
6 years and nearly 400k words later, my Poly Marauders story is complete. It’s definitely a slow burn but more because of the focus on friendship rather than endless angsty pining.
This is definitely a commitment but if you’ve enjoyed my other stuff this will probably be up your alley as well.
Progress: 59 chapters written, 45 edited, 389809 words total.
Next to Do: Write Chapter 105 of 105
Dragged my feet a little on finishing this one. But I wanted to get it (and the last chapter) perfect. At 9.3k words it’s easily the longest chapter in the entire fic.
