@unmaskedcardinal so I was looking at the recommended reading order doc for rito chronicles and saw that it was incomplete and promptly decided to complete it. I think I have some stuff wrong in here but I tried lol.
I put it below the cut:
TOTK Compliant Only:
Turn Our Hearts
Age of Intolerance
Winter’s Warmth
First Blood
Cool Safflina
Once Bitten
End of Days
Last Flight
By Candle’s Light
Forgiveness
The World in Colour
Loneliness
The Last Time
Despite
For Ages to Come
Mijah Rokee
Plateau
Foreign Territory
Without Hesitation
To The Winds Scatter
Nothing Ventured
Stable Brats
The Chronicler
No E Rated (Still M)
Turn Our Hearts
Age of Intolerance
Winter’s Warmth
First Blood
Once Bitten
End of Days
Last Flight
By Candle’s Light
Forgiveness
The World in Colour
Despite
For Ages to Come
Mijah Rokee
Plateau
Without Hesitation
The Flock (Part 1)
They’ll Grow Back
Safe
The Flock (Part 2)
Change of Heart (this is such a weird fic [love it tho lol] it’s classified as post flock fic but it happens during flock 2, I think between chapters 8 and 9?)
The Chronicler
(somewhat random placement ngl, although I read it after everything else so there’s that lol)
Post Flock Fics
Sons of Our Houses
A Good Brother
Fellow Warrior
Huddle Together
Cooler Breezes
To Mend
Tomorrow
Wasteland
Denial
TOTK Branch (circle back to Without Hesitation)
To The Winds Scatter
Nothing Ventured
Stable Brats
Disaster Crew Focused
Who’s the disaster crew idk sorry. I would do this part if I knew lol
Core Rito Focused
I’m a little dumb and don’t really know who the core rito are either, but I’m assuming it’s the likes of Teba, Saki, Harth, uh uh Amali, Kass, etc? (i think i’m missing someone lol). But I’m also not sure, so lmk if I’m wrong!
Turn Our Hearts
Age of Intolerance
Winter’s Warmth
Once Bitten
By Candle’s Light
Forgiveness
For Ages to Come
Chase Away the Darkness
TIMELINE SPLIT
The Flock (Part 1)
Safe
The Flock (Part 2)
The Nights to Come
The View from Above
To Speak Aloud
Post Flock fics
Sons of Our Houses
Denial
Three to Mend
TOTK BRANCH (circle back to for ages to come)
To The Winds Scatter
Nothing Ventured
Chronological (I’m bad at this btw pls don’t mind me lol)
The Chronicler
Age of Intolerance
Winter’s Warmth
First Blood (so technically this might be for the chronicler. But I can't imagine it happening before Kass was born so I’ll stick it under age of intolerance.)
Cool Safflina
Loneliness
Once Bitten
End of Days
Last Flight
By Candle’s Light
Forgiveness
The World in Colour
The Last Time
Despite
Turn Our Hearts
For Ages to Come
Mijah Rokee
Plateau
Foreign Territory
Chase Away the Darkness
Without Hesitation
TIMELINE SPLIT (AU Path first)
They’ll Grow Back
The Flock (Part 1)
Reunion
Stifled
Lost in the Green
Safe
The Flock (Part 2)
The Nights to Come
The View from Above
Change of Heart
To Speak Aloud
Post Flock fics
Sons of Our Houses
A Good Brother
Fellow Warrior
Huddle Together
Make Do
Cooler Breezes
To Mend
Tomorrow
Wasteland
Denial
Three to Mend
TOTK STUFF (Circle back to “Without Hesitation”)
To The Winds Scatter
Nothing Ventured
Stable Brats
Order of Posting
I’m not doing this one because I don’t know, since I know some of the fics have been rewritten, so I can’t put them back in order :(
Also side note, your cryptpad link for the visual guide doesn’t work, it says it’s been copied from the browser bar and doesn’t provide access to the document
Anyways I spent way too much time on this 😂 ig I have to sleep now...
This is pretty good! I would say "core Rito" are Teba, Saki, Kass, Amali and Harth. The Disaster Crew is Gesane, Guy, Mimo, Mazli, Frita and occasionally Laissa 😂 someone once referred to that group as "the Disaster Crew" and I've loved it ever since.
Thank you for this! It may be a while before I update, but I appreciate this so much!
How would Rito Chronicles have changed if Teba had been the Sage of Wind instead of Tulin in TotK?
Interesting question!
Short answer: I would not have written a TotK branch of Rito Chronicles.
Long answer below the cut: smallish spoilers for TotK, spoilers for Rito Chronicles, and some hints at where Land Softly in Snowfall intends to go. Buckle up.
The thing I enjoyed most about TotK was the sense that in the years since BotW wrapped up the world has grown and changed: there are building projects all over, including what looks like an attempt to rebuild on the foundations of Castle Town; the NPCs have moved around a bit and (to my wild imagination) their stories have progressed, they’ve changed; the world on the ground feels fuller and more interconnected, with wagon drivers and travellers you encounter more frequently. This is always where I have started when writing Rito Chronicles.
The first three longfics (Turns Our Hearts, Age of Intolerance, For Ages to Come) were written with some specific goals in mind:
give development to flat NPCs based on their very tiny snippets of dialogue
create interpersonal relationships based on proximity in game
have everyone end up in their “starting positions” (you see this in particular in the last half of Turns our Hearts when Harth and Saki walk up the boardwalk and encounter everyone in the positions Link finds them in)
create motivations rooted in the fic's plot for the characters to be doing what they’re doing in game (Gesane gives Link the talus quest in-game because in For Ages to Come his wings have been clipped. Half-baked scenes of Mimo defrauding Link with the wind game are buried somewhere in my notes. Kass has the photo of the Champions because of the quest the Sheikah took to deliver Olin’s books to him.)
The AU branch (The Flock and post-Flock oneshots) doesn’t follow this motivation at all, it just fleshes out the characters beyond the ending by throwing more complicated problems and brushes with death at them. The TotK branch however, does return to those roots of setting everyone up in their starting positions. (Sidenote: I absolutely love that many of them are in close proximity in-game to who they would characteristically prefer to be with in Rito Chronicles.)
By the end of To The Winds Scatter, I’ve set up things meant to correlate with what’s going on in-game:
Billson’s motivations for leaving to work with Hylians
Harth helping Teba perfect bow-crafting
why the hell you can’t find Frita until you clear some hurdles in-game
what Guy has been doing in the desert this whole time (this was a pain because I had brought him home at the end of For Ages to Come so I needed to get him to leave again)
why Teba is in the village when Link arrives and not out doing Teba Stuff on the field ('because he's elder' just doesn't fly with me)
Jerrin and Hoz leaving Akkala to go work for Zelda
just... all the Hudson’s building drama
why Ariane and Lester have left the stable (and Ponthos isn’t hanging out in Tabantha anymore either)
Traysi, Penn, Juannelle and Galli and the former stable
why Tulin ends up being Gesane’s problem to complain about (and why Gesane and Harth go together to send him off)
And with that, we actually get to the real reason why a TotK branch exists: Harth fucking sent his best friend’s child into danger.
We as the audience of course know Tulin will be absolutely fine with Link, but Harth took it upon himself to make this decision and it is a weird one to make story-wise. This is the real thing I’ve been setting up for.
Sun, you say, you haven’t even reached that part! Nope, you’re right, but it’s been gnawing a hole in my brain for two years now. What words do Harth and Gesane exchange after Tulin is out of earshot? How does Harth tell Teba and Saki what he’s done? Why do you think Harth has to leave immediately after that?
Much like Turn Our Hearts was built around the moment Harth and Teba embark on their foolish plan to board Vah Medoh, I’ve built the main story line in the TotK around the knowledge that Harth is about to really fuck up everything in his life for what he perceives to be the greater good. That moment was the moment the story began to form.
The game makes it very calm and straightforward, but even in-game I can’t imagine Teba and Saki were pleased to hear what had become of Tulin. I can’t help but think by the way they’re oriented on the landing when they tell Link what’s going on that something has happened to make Harth stand so far away from them T/S/H or not.
When it comes down to it, I can’t really imagine what changes Teba being the Sage of Wind vs Tulin being the Sage of Wind would mean for Rito Chronicles. My Teba struggles with purpose and often has the sense his purpose in the grand scheme of things has either been fulfilled and it didn’t amount to all that much, or he’s in the wrong position (as Elder) and it drives him to go out onto the field to reassert what he feels is his natural purpose. I think Sage of Wind is a role Teba would be prepared to accept, but it’s a little too tidy for Rito Chronicles. Let’s put that bird man in a position where he can be conflicted about his son accepting the title, having to deal with the interpersonal fallout of what Harth has done, worrying what it means for Tulin to be named a Sage and coming to terms with what it means to have been passed over by the powers that be.
Link to my blog directory where you can find links to Rito Chronicles reading orders and a guide to where things fall in the timeline.
@minorlight this was such a fun prompt! It's one that I am going to probably turn into a real finished piece if I can. I knew immediately this was from Chapter 5 of For Ages to Come when Kass offers Mimo tea.
I will not lie. There are lots of things on this that are unfinished. I was not prepared to put clothes on them for one thing (Rito have no concept of nudity anyway), but this has made me confront my fear of drawing Kass (who I know is your fave). I've started trying to refine my own way of doing wings so that they fall somewhere between the big beefy hands of canon and actual wings. I really like how Mimo's left wing (holding the imaginary cup) looks.
I also may have taken too long on Mimo's expression, but I think it looks so good!
Thank you for sending me this prompt! I also really like your other one, but I envision it as a huge piece with like... 3 panels, so it may have to just exist in my brain until I can do it justice :)
Rules: In a new post use the words below (or choose your own) to find where they appear in your WIP/s and share those parts.
Thank you @drsteggy for the tag!
My words are words are horse, sweet and raucous.
HORSE
Do you know how deep I had to dig for 'horse'? I had nothing in my active WIPs that had any stable stuff. I went back to half-written chapters of a fic I abandoned in 2020!
From an unposted chapter of Wanderlust:
As the summer wore into fall, the snow remained along the north path. The days shortened, and Pikango no longer felt the aches from his injuries. He helped Lusson fashion new slats for the bunk he had damaged on their first night at the inn while Monkton was engaged, training two wild horses he had broken in over the summer.
SWEET
This one on the other hand was added this week to The Chronicler:
“Amali comes from a good line,” Osol said. “Northern father, Akkalan mother. The same as you.”
“Mother—”
“Or Saki?” she pressed. “You ought to be with someone whose line is as strong as your own.”
“Why are you saying these things?” Teba hissed, feathers on the back of his neck rising as though Kaneli were standing right behind him.
Osol’s face fell, fingertips brushing Teba’s cheek, drawing him in once more.
“You know why, sweet chick,” she said, the shine of her eyes no longer [just from fever].
RAUCOUS
I can only conclude that I do not use this word after digging through WIPs in fandoms I never posted for, dating as far back as 2013!!!
I'm going to go to a random word generator and see what I get.
WAIST
Oh finally! This is from my Age of Calamity Tebali fic that is currently under the working title Tebali Shitshow:
Revali paid the Gerudo and Gorons no mind as he came to a halt on the scorched, narrow rug that ran the length of the hall between what had once been rows of trestle tables. Instead, his eyes rested on the small group of Zora who drank solemnly with their Champion and Link. At Prince Sidon’s side sat two captains—one with black scales and countless scars, the other with blue scales and the kind of mournful face that would look sad even if he were smiling. Across the table sat Princess Mipha, her tiny hand upon Link’s knee, Link’s hand around her waist in a display of affection that Teba was certain was inappropriate for one of her rank. It was on their account that Revali scowled.
Tagging @rainy-circle @lily-alphonse and @cyraclove. Your words are shape, safe and possible.
Out of the blue but inspired by my own worlds and writings. Do you have any further thoughts on rito marriage customs with the ritos, perhaps before the collpase? I think having cool Safflina that you added was a really nice touch to a major cultural difference, but I've been just rotting over other signs of affection such as feather gifting, especially since Tulin's bow has his parent's feathers there; even strange stuff like dance with irl tropical birds.
Hey @minorlight ! I love out of the blue stuff! Let's see what can be done to either alleviate or contribute to that rot 😁
I don't super get in to Rito courting rituals in my work, mostly because at the time I started writing, it felt like there was an plethora of Revalink fics that focused on a lot of the Rito courting things that seem to have become fanon. And I very stubbornly did very little on the courting/wedding custom side and an awful lot on death, grief and funerals. However, I do always imply that there was a difference before the Collapse, but I've written nothing in that era.
Spoilers below the cut for:
The Chronicler
Age of Intolerance
For Ages to Come
Cool Safflina (E)
This sounds like a request for headcanons, and as much as I may be pretty good at the worldbuilding and writing interpersonal drama, I am terrible at just dropping headcanons. Instead, I write entire series of fics to deal with them. So, in order to answer this, I need to look at what we already know about marriage from the fics for evidence, then I'll talk affection, cool safflina, and feathers after.
Immediately post-Collapse is the most restrictive period, and unions were all arranged with an eye to repopulating with healthy offspring and leaders taking the opportunity to grab control of the lives of youth, except in the case of Kyvoro and Lodli who found a way around that. In this era there are not a whole lot of expressions of genuine affection documented in fic because you have the first generation of young people, still deeply traumatized and not allowed much choice in the matter.
Post-Collapse but pre-BotW, around the time Kass arrives, there has been some pushback against the most restrictive practices. Amali choosing Kass as a husband is embraced, Harth and Antilli ending up together is tolerated (I'm going to return to them in a bit). It's still heavily implied that Teba and Saki were not given much choice in the matter.
Though not chronologically the first wedding in the series, Kass and Amali's exchange of vows is the first occasion that I had to work out any rituals and ceremony. They of course fell in love some time after the "proposal" and this is what we learn of existing and remaining custom through those chapters in Age of Intolerance:
Amali thought Kass was courting her by being alone with her and playing music. Kass did not realize this was how his actions were interpreted.
It's permissible to go meet the family of your intended. Despite the restrictions around travel in this era (especially for women), Genik covers for Kass and Amali by telling Kaneli that this is what they're doing as a part of their courting. This would have been not a pre-Collapse custom, but a pre-Calamity custom, dating back to when there were multiple Rito colonies across Hyrule.
Marriage is not about love; it's about duty. This is covered in about every single relationship: Genik being summoned back home to Misa because she "misses him" (the implication here is that the night Kyvoro sends Genik back to Misa is the night Fyson's egg happens). The implication that Teba and Saki's vows had been about duty when Kass and Amali's had been about love.
Exchanging vows is witnessed but not officiated. I liked the idea that there was not someone presiding over weddings, and only a witness (Elder or Chronicler) who would enter the event in their official records. As the question of freewill has been at the heart of the cultural shift in Rito Chronicles, I wanted to design a ceremony that was pretty lowkey, but also placed the emphasis on actually committing to the act of formalizing a union in the hands of the participants (and interesting irony post-Collapse when mates are arranged).
Marriage in our world is mostly about property. Rito have personal items that can be considered their own, but do not own their roosts. They may take over roosts where their parents lived, and are generally responsible for the upkeep of roosts, but they are granted roosts based on need and availability. They don't really use rupees as currency post-Calamity until the stable is built and they start to have exchange with Hylians. Marriage for Rito is about tradition.
So, what did pre-Collapse rituals look like?
Post-Collapse we see forced heternormativity, extreme concern about ensuring that no one is marrying if they have too many common ancestors, a generation of unhappy marriages that were meant to be permanent.
What is evidenced in the story pre-Collapse:
Unions of any gender were allowed and were generally love-matches. (See: the elderly Rito yelling at Nasoli and Kaneli in The Chronicler CH 11).
There was more fuss made about the Rito partners' "class" backgrounds than anything else (the jokes about Akarth having married an Akkala Rito from the population who had been stranded post-Calamity. The suspicions about Avill, Ithi and Kyvoro's family because one of their parents had been a ground-dweller.)
Rito would not have had contact with other peoples in this period, so there was really no worry about marriage between Rito and anyone else.
Traditionally, Northern Rito (the bulk of the inhabitants of Rito Village and the ground-dwellers) had monogamous 2 person unions, but they could dissolve them by telling the Elder they wished to do so and having it noted in The Chronicle.
Reproduction was intended to occur in the confines of unions. When there was no population crisis, shaking unwanted eggs or leaving them to grow cold was at the egg-layer's discretion.
The tradition of smashing eggs suspected to have been made outside of marriage was meant to be a cathartic means to put affairs behind them. Not every "bastard egg" was smashed, many were raised knowingly or unknowingly by the non-biological parent.
Adoption was typically reserved for orphans and not eggs, though it is implied that Iska and his husband had accepted an egg from the ground-dwellers, hatched it and raised the offspring as their own.
Cool Safflina:
The first instance where it happened (before revisions) is when Gesane offered an arrangement of cool safflina and his own feathers to Ariane (For Ages to Come CH 6). This can happen during a proposal, but it's not limited to proposals and is meant to be a sign of devotion and the intention of pursuing a monogamous relationship with the other person. Ariane did not understand this, Gesane was self-conscious about it and thought maybe he'd gone overboard.
It shows up again (to trigger Harth in FATC CH 10) when Huck is putting together a bouquet for his proposal to Bedoli. Harth flies into a rage over what is supposed to be a symbol of love being handed over in an empty gesture, and Huck mocks him, claiming no one marries for love anymore.
The bouquet with feathers is meant to be a big, personal gesture, deep into courting.
In Cool Safflina, Guy (lovesick and having finally slept with Gesane) mistakes Gesane's pondering over a single sprig of cool safflina that had got caught in his discarded cuirass, as a gesture of romantic affection.
The single sprig is also used in The Chronicler: Kyvoro idly picks some on retreat, Lodli weaves a spring of cool safflina in the strap of Kyvoro's armour, Antilli throws some at them when they get married, Kyvoro leaves the wilted sprig from their wedding across the blanketed egg that Lodli holds.
The single sprig is more subtle. It can be gifted at a much earlier stage in a relationship, a wish to express interest, a promise of something more, a flirtatious gesture.
Bonus: cool safflina is used in fever remedies.
Feathers
Ornamental
In Rito Chronicles, feathers are not specifically romantic (except when paired with cool safflina), but are something personal. In game, Tulin has a charm made with short feathers from Saki and Teba (which hurts my heart) and works well with the instances in my fics.
The feathers on the posts in roosts are not white as they are in game, but implied to be from the inhabitants of the roost. Ornaments are hand-made (Molli plays with them, Guy makes them during a recovery, Mazli's son sends him one with a feather that was possibly stolen from Mimo).
Gesane has never redecorated, and the feathers in his roost belong to his parents. This is both sentimental and that brand of weird pragmatism that Gesane has.
Harth leaves Antili's feathers up with his after her death.
Grief
The most common reference in RC is the flight feather that is plucked on one side and placed on the funerary shroud of a deceased Rito. It is meant to leave the one who plucked it unbalanced in flight while they are grieving, the knowledge that their bodies will rebalance themselves either by shedding the same feather on the other side or when it regrows, is meant to be a comfort that grief can be lived with.
Casual
To settle disputes, late in the series, Rito pluck a single feather from their thigh and compare the length. This is a "shortest straw goes" thing.
Feathers can also be drawn to pick a volunteer.
Practical
In-game, down is supposed to be used in the snowquill collection and in the soft bed.
Rito Chronicles does not use this, but in Forsaken, Teba had fletched a dozen arrows with his own feathers as a gift to Harth.
This probably doesn't offer much that you don't already know (I'm not a great headcanons person) but maybe it will give you a little something to spin into the worldbuilding that is tormenting you.
I'm sure this is not the writing announcement anyone wants to hear, but The Chronicler has decided it's going to be 23 chapters. (Fucking, finally). Shout out to the person who took the time to tell me how enjoyed Kyvoro is, setting off a chain of events that resulted in me putting the notes in order at long last!
Additional Tags: Drama; Worldbuilding; interpersonal relationships; Hyrule Politics; Rito Village; Ensemble Cast; Sexual Content; post-botw and pre-totk; Reasonably Canon Compliant; also canon complaint; additional info in chapter notes; Untagged ships
Summary: After Link defeats Calamity Ganon in Hyrule Field the blood moon no longer rises, monsters grow scarce across the land, and the Divine Beasts go dark. In Vah Medoh’s shadow the lives of the Rito go on under the leadership of their new Elder, but their hard won peace is threatened by an unexpected arrival.
Start at the beginning*
A part of Rito Chronicles* by sturms sun shattered
Visual guide to Rito Chronicles (hosted on cryptpad)
*Fics are archive locked. Please sign in to Ao3 to read.
As of chapter 23 To the Winds Scatter has overtaken the previous record holder for word count.
Age of Intolerance (122,317 revised/104,576 original) held the record for longest fic for over 4 years, during which I completed 7 other multichapter fics (and started posting 2 more, one of which still updates when the planets align). I wrote a lot in confinement.
AOI took me about 5 months to write the first time (again, very locked down). TTWS has taken about 16 months. I'm usually sad to be getting to the end of a fic, but I'm only a couple of chapters from the end (final edits) and I'm ready to let this one go so I can switch to something else for a while.
What advice would you have for a writer trying to switch to a more ensemble/Gen style of writing instead of a single fixed POV? One of my primary concerns is how to handle a character's inner thoughts.
Please go as ham as you want on this I will read it all
Lily :)
Lily this is such a good question! I will try to answer it in a useful way <3
(I wrote the above and then needed to open a doc to organize myself. I am so sorry for what lies beyond the cut.)
Disclaimer: I am not an expert, I’m just relaying what I know after a few years of intensive fic writing, having an interest in genre and the purpose of genre, and collecting as much fandom history as I can. This is from a fic writer’s POV because I am not terribly interested in writing original novels (but I have tried my hand at screenplays, again, big cast). I have no formal training in creative writing. I will be using examples from Rito Chronicles up to the point where you have read.
I will start by saying, my first fics had so many characters in them that I had excel sheets to track them, so I’ve always been into working with an “ensemble cast” of characters. Writing a longer fic from 1 or 2 POVs is not something that I ever did until the last few years. Those two fics are technically romance, but even when I write something shippy it's more "gen shaped" than "shippy shaped". What I mean by that comes down to the structural elements of what makes a shippy fic and what makes a gen fic, which is how we’ll start this journey, and then I'll talk my approach to characterization.
A Very Abridged Background on Genre
Genre is, above all, a marketing category. When you read a trashy romance, you know what beats will be in there, when they will be hit, and what to expect at the end. When you watch a half hour sitcom, same thing. Genre is how you find your audience, regardless of the medium. Fanfiction has an incredibly diverse set of tropes that contribute to romantic or general sub-genres, and it mixes, matches and evolves in a way that commercial media would never risk (to avoid alienating they eyeballs they need to sell to advertisers).
Fanfic has long been divided along the axis of Gen vs Romance, and Romance was typically divided by who was kissing (slash, femslash, and het). Ao3 was born out of these conventions, which is why it i organized the way it is.
Shippy fics (and I am calling them shippy fics because they have a distinct feel from traditionally published romance) typically rely on a trope or combination of tropes in order to fulfill the end goal of getting two (or perhaps more) characters together (I’m generalizing). Shippy fics are an entire genre to themselves that are informed by romance tropes and fanfic tropes and are primarily built on yearning. Good ones will keep the characters away from each other at crucial intervals (thought they were dead, must choose duty over self, etc.) with legitimate reasons. “Why can’t they be together now?” is the core question for these fics, and if there isn’t a strong reason for keeping them apart, the tension and yearning deflates, the fic falls flat. (Same goes for any romantic plot in anything).
The interesting thing about characters in shippy fics is how they slowly come to be on the same page through a series of realizations and moments of trust being built. The romantic relationship (or QPR works structurally the same in fic) is the central pillar of the story, so the character arcs should mirror each other to some degree, and the fic ends when they get together (or maybe after an epilogue). I’m generalizing a bit here of course, there are endless ways to play with the genre, but I’m going to restrain myself from writing a thesis on it.
Gen longfic tends to pick up other tropes and genres: action, adventure, coming of age. Any sort of genre that is not specific to romance (and many that are) can be included in gen. When we talk about gen in terms of fanfic it tends to be treated as the opposite of romance. There is also a lot of wank surrounding the shippy vs. gen fic (along wanky lines) about how gen is superior because it sets itself aside from “those nasty shippers who just want to make men kiss”. This is (obviously) complete bullshit. There is nothing more “noble” about gen, nor does it account for a more thorough exploration of character than shippy genres.
Structurally, there is a little more leeway with gen I think, but ultimately the difference (to me) is a matter of different tropes being used. The story can be just as narrowly focused on one (or, more rarely, two) characters as a romance can be, it’s just a matter of the fic ending when the closing point of the plot/trope is fulfilled.
But you asked about more I call “ensemble” fics, and while I do have to think about aspects of it, I have worked with multiple character POVs for so long, that actually translating what I do into words is a bit chaotic, but dammit, I’ll try.
In good fanfic (either shippy or gen) I don’t see much of difference in terms of writing. Both deliver a deep dive into the characters inner thoughts, histories, and progression arcs over the fic. The character should come out of a longfic changed for what they’ve experienced, whether that is falling for someone who they (very frequently, but not always) aren’t with in canon, or because of the forces of the plot.
My Approach
Listen, in a lot of my most recent work, I see and unattended NPC, ask if anyone’s going to pad out their characterization, and don’t wait for an answer. I try to apply some kind of canon logic to why they are the way they are (Mazli is a gossip because he told Link about the troubles of the village when Link approached; Laissa wants to be a warrior because of her line about taking Medoh down herself if she were a warrior; Bedoli is scatter brained because she couldn’t remember the song she gave Link in a quest) and try to give them some sort of distinct voice. For characters who have distinct voices in canon (Revali, Mipha, Sidon, Teba, etc.) I do the fanfic author thing of immersing myself in their voices and trying to replicate their speech and presumed thought patterns.
That’s the easy part. That’s just generating headcanons to flesh out your story based on canon. Here I’ll try to break down the relationships between character and plot.
1. You know the ending in a shippy fic, you just have to get there. In a gen fic you have to know what you are closing in on if you want to work your way there.
I’m an inveterate pantser. I do very little structural planning of a fic if I am not collaborating with another writer. In fact, I describe the list of plot points I want to hit as a “wishlist”. My wishlist typically includes some indication of who will get together, something interesting about birds I want to build into the world, maybe a crucial thing that has to happen before the second half of the story. But I always have my last scene in mind, so I can ask “how do they get to that point?” whenever I start another scene. Once I’m into the story, I can start ordering my wishlist into more specific scenes.
I use the Flashlight Method as I reach each point, and I let the points I have be flexible to accommodate things that may come up. In Rito Chronicles, this is typically me discovering that another character needs to have a POV in order to stabilize, solidify, justify a point that comes up later.
I typically keep 5-10 chapters ahead of what I have posted. This is usually enough to go back and add a detail to an unposted chapter if something comes up in my current chapter that needs to be anchored.
2. Let the characters do all the work
I’m going to talk about developing characters a little bit later, but knowing what the characters are about allows you to let them lead the action. But what I have found (outside of being really familiar with the characters) is you need to know who knows what, how reliable their understanding of the knowledge is, how they came across it, and if/how they use it.
If it feels like they’re just talking and it has no tension, add an agitator to a scene. This can be something external like noise, or injuries, but I frequently rely on a few characters to be agitators in specific situations (Harth agitates Teba, Mazli agitates Gesane, Nekk sets off Huck and Huck agitates everyone.)
I can’t really explain how to make a characters stories dovetail. My understanding is you can plan it and work backward from it, but I’ve never been able to execute it. These usually come about organically for me and I pounce on them.
My favourite example is in For Ages to Come when Gesane’s wings are clipped. Leading up to the incident, you see a little bit of rumbling about limited freedoms, how Teba and Saki were pushed into each other’s wings in an effort to get layin’, how Fyson is afraid to ask to leave.
The event ties together Gesane and Teba’s storylines when Teba defends him, and Teba experiences a moment of clarity about the cruelty of their world that he had grown so accustomed to. Fyson is so disturbed by the wing clipping, he is driven to finally ask for leave. Harth drops some of his asshattedness (for lack of a better term) to comfort Gesane, and see the connection between Gesane not being allowed to be with his Hylian love, and Harth’s wife dying while egg-bound.
Even better, it provided a moment to converge character, action, and worldbuilding, giving us the first detailed glimpse of the Rito system of justice.
Ridiculously, this was all to provide a Watsonian answer the question of “why doesn’t Gesane just go and kill the talus in coldsnap hollow himself instead of sending Link on a sidequest?”
3. Who gets the POV?
I debate with myself about this a lot when I’m writing, trying to balance it so we can have a diverse set of perspectives, but ultimately I decide based on who is carrying the plot, and who will have the most impactful POV. There are some times when I avoid a particular POV. Recently I opted for Harth over Saki, even though they were equally suitable, because Saki’s POV would expose some secrets to the audience that I did not want to come out.
When the plot is just what your characters do, it’s easy to just hand the appropriate character something off the checklist, and let them filter the experience through their perspective. This works especially well for foreshadowing and offhandedly providing some future info.
4. Introducing Characters
Dealing with character introductions in fanfic is a little bit different than original fiction. Most of the audience will know the characters from whatever text you’re sourcing them from, and will have sought them out. There are the occasional fandom-blind readers, but I personally don’t cater to them (and have long meditations on the borders of fanfic and what makes good fanfic, but that’s for another time).
In my case, I was dealing with entire villages full of NPCs and some OCs (to move the plot), so I was pretty strategic in how I introduced them. In Turns our Hearts I started with Kass and Teba, who I figured the audience would be most likely to know. I moved on to characters that the audience would probably know, (Saki, Amali, Harth, Fyson, Kaneli), and (with the exception of Gesane, who could have his own essay). I mentioned them relative to who they were, their positions in the layout of the in-game village, and tried to make their presence apparent right from the start by indicating who they were to Kass and Teba.
But don’t bombard your audience with names, especially ones they don’t know, right away (I say, breaking this rule at the beginning of one fic). Let them show up organically in crowds, letters, gossip, and if you give them a POV, make the first one really count.
Conventional advice has been that if you want a character to be liked, you need to give the audience a reason to be invested in them. Making them too cool, too strong, too good is usually unrelatable unless there is something to balance that out. Give them a vulnerability. Make them fallible. Do it right away because you have like a minute before your audience clicks off.
5. Interpersonal relationships
I’ve been told that one of the hallmarks of my writing is the intense interpersonal struggle, the webs that encompass every kind of relationship, how they morph and change, the implied history that unfolds as the series progresses. I do this with all my writing, but nothing can match the volume of Rito Chronicles, so that’s where it is most pronounced. It’s been affectionately called a Rito soap opera, because I go straight for the drama, and at the crux of all drama is interpersonal conflict.
My key ingredients for creating the interpersonal relationship hinge on proximity, history and “external forces”.
Proximity is next door neighbours, fellow warriors, merchants, a guard at the end of a bridge meeting the eyes of the Hylian who sweeps the stableyard. This is the thing I rely on to make the relationship make sense. Where would they have met? How well would they know each other based on these meetings? What is the level of formality based on their social proximity? Not everyone knows each other that well (though they often think they do in a small village), and you can exploit those misunderstandings to inform how the POV character views other characters.
History is something I make up as I go. To me, it feels like uncovering aspects of their characters and comes as a surprise. In For Ages to Come I called back to the impulsive inclusion of a disaster (the Collapse) that I did not yet know the scope of, with Harth being afraid of windy nights as a child, and recalling how his father carried him on the boardwalk, while doing the same for a distraught Tulin. (You don’t actually see him thinking this, he says something like this aloud to Amali in her POV after). Go back and re-read your work and things will jump out at you that you can play with here.
“External forces” have frequently been politics in my fics, but they’re also cultural differences. (Rito don’t have a word for ‘blond’ to Ariane’s amusement, but Hylian eyes also can’t see the differences in plumages between the identical NPCs.) Character POVs are filtered through these differences.
6. The limits of 3rd person POVs and how to leverage them
I go with a very retro fanfic method of delineating POVs, which is to slap the POV’s name at the top in bold and write their scene. I avoid “headhopping” between two characters in a scene because 3rd person limited POV offers such ample opportunities for distinct voices and unreliable narrators.
Every character is unreliable in Rito Chronicles. They piece together events from incomplete information, are influenced by gossip, justify shitty things to themselves as necessary (not just looking at Kaneli here), and they frequently misinterpret each other when they try to suss out what the non-POV character is thinking. It follows that some characters read expressions, irony, and what goes unsaid, better than others.
Sometimes it’s easy to figure out (Harth, though particularly obtuse, cannot possibly miss the fact that Gesane is having a breakdown after the wing-clipping). Sometimes they have no clue (Fyson cannot begin to comprehend what compelled Teba to clip Gesane’s wings). And sometimes only certain people know things (Gesane is thought to never laugh, but his laugh is just a breath that Guy and Ariane can recognize) Vary the emotional intelligence here.
The author should probably know what the non POV characters are thinking in a scenario though.
7. How much to pre-plan your characters
I really don’t. I go in and discover them as I go by writing within the confines of their characterization. It’s more important to know how they will react to something, because the why can be manufactured later. This prevents derailing the story with background that isn’t coming out organically.
Advice I’ve read is to give characters a secret that audience can’t know, and before writing them in your main work, attempt their POV in a WIP you intend never to publish. I haven’t always done that last one, but for some of the characters I find more difficult to get a handle on I do.
Always let the history laid out in your story inform the present thoughts and actions.
Final Remarks
If you made it this far... holy cow I barely did. I don’t really know how I do what I do. Everyone’s method is going to be different, but the one thing I cannot stress enough is: if your memory is like mine, you can’t avoid rereading what you’ve already written.
Inner thoughts are formed by previous events as well as the present, as I've tried to demonstrate above. How you write them in terms of narrative styling depends on you (whether you write close to the character, which is typical of Ao3 House style, or more distantly, like I do.)
If I haven't said it overtly in the text, I want to emphasize here: it's more compelling to write a simple story with complex characters than a complex story that lacks depth of character. This has always been my approach.
I’ve tackled this from a fanfic perspective, and the perspective of Rito Chronicles specifically. I hope this answers your question or at least entertains ♥
Rules: From your Story/WIP, share a kiss. It can be any kiss—from familial pecks on the cheek, forehead kisses, platonic smooches, to full-blown makeouts. Spread the love! ❤️
Rules: Share a snippet of your writing!
Thanks for the tag @zeawesomebirdie ! I really had to think about whether I had any kisses in my WIPs. Fortunately I do if you count Rito "kisses" 🤣
No pressure tags for: @drsteggy @cyraclove @papercranesong @lily-alphonse @deaththesyd
Sneak peek from the upcoming chapter (16) of To the Winds Scatter below the cut.
Saki/Harth; it's a beak touch; a little bit of manipulation happening; just before it turns M rated
Saki grasped his wing and turned him sharply to face her.
“Saki,” Harth chided, his chest hollow.
“Why are you fleeing from us as though you’re being chased out?”
“It’s hardly fleeing,” said Harth, covering the hand that gripped his elbow. “You can see my roost from here.”
“Harth.” Saki traced over the muscles of his shoulder, the fine bones of his furcula, fingertip resting in the hollow at the base of his neck.
Harth avoided her eyes, lifting his beak as he stared into the dark night beyond. A single lantern remained lit in Kaneli’s roost.
“We have a duty—” Harth attempted to protest, but Saki cut him off.
“I’ve spent so much of my life accepting that my duty had little to do with my desires,” she whispered, her breath warm against his throat. “Please, allow me this one.”
His heart thrummed once more, his body aching at her touch.
“Take me,” she breathed, nuzzling into his neck.
Skin burning beneath his feathers, Harth closed his eyes, allowing their beaks to touch. His hands followed her spine downwards to rest above her tail feathers, Drawing her near, he let her sash fall to the floor.
Who was he to deny her what she wanted when their world had already done so?
Additional Tags: Drama; Worldbuilding; interpersonal relationships; Hyrule Politics; Rito Village; Ensemble Cast; Sexual Content; post-botw and pre-totk; Reasonably Canon Compliant; also canon complaint; additional info in chapter notes; Untagged ships
Summary: After Link defeats Calamity Ganon in Hyrule Field the blood moon no longer rises, monsters grow scarce across the land, and the Divine Beasts go dark. In Vah Medoh’s shadow the lives of the Rito go on under the leadership of their new Elder, but their hard won peace is threatened by an unexpected arrival.
Chapter 8* (NEW)
Start at the beginning*
A part of Rito Chronicles* by sturms sun shattered
Visual guide to Rito Chronicles (hosted on cryptpad)
*Fics are archive locked. Please sign in to Ao3 to read.
“You don’t preen with your own oils do you?” Revali appeared beside him.
“You’d have known if I did,” said Teba irately. “Why ask?”
“As you noticed earlier, I didn’t pack an overnight bag,” said Revali.
On the dresser was a round, white plastic container with a black lid. Teba handed it to Revali, who read the label with narrowed eyes.
“Unscented pharmacy brand. I can’t say I’m surprised,” sighed Revali unscrewing the lid. “Desperate times, I suppose.”
Revali has some criticisms about Teba's philosophies on hygiene. They fuck about it.
Recently I've been trying to figure out the best way to organize this absolutely sprawling saga. I haven't really given it much of a rearrangement since I split it from "Illuminate Your Path" in 2020.
I made visual guide to Rito Chronicles hosted on cryptpad to help anyone who wants to know where everything fits. All the fics are linked to Ao3 but you have to be signed in to read them.
pixelskylines
izzy806
baratheonpilled
origamiaround
germansingergirl
2087
