#ftdwr

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Hi Pia! I have been away from Tumblr and AO3 for quite a while (a few years now) and just a while back I was feeling very bad due to personal stuff, and I remembered your stories (especially the very first fanfic I ever read and that got me into fandoms, FDWR) so I read FDWR and ITDWF again, and oh my god, how I've loved them to bits even though I knew them. It was such a nice thing to come back to, I'm so glad they are still there. I do have a question about Pitch, but I vaguely remember you not being very comfortable with daddy kinks, so if you don't like this please feel free to delete or just not reply! If it's okay, however, I'd like to know: how would Pitch even react to being called "daddy"? I feel like it would definitely be an issue because of Seraphina, but I couldn't help but wonder, and I just wanted to hear your opinion (especially after finishing What If). Anyway, I hope you're alright. I miss reading you, so I'll definitely use this sudden burst of good mood to read more of your recent stories. I know I'm gonna love them. I hope you have a wonderful day/night, whenever you read this.

Hi anon!

Re: how would Pitch even react to being called "daddy"?

I definitely think you answered the question when you said 'I feel like it would definitely be an issue.' Like I think it would absolutely be an issue and a hard limit for him. I think it could be different for the version of Pitch in The Golden Age that Never Was because his daughter is still alive, and so the word isn't as loaded with grief and also him wanting to sort of keep it as a memorial word? It has the potential to mean more things.

But yeah in the SALverse, I think Pitch would be pretty disgusted with the idea. Just...instant turnoff.

If you ever do get to any of the other stories (there's also a whole bunch over at my other account, thespectaclesofthor), I hope you enjoy them! But 'm really glad you enjoyed FtDWR and ISWF :D

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honestly I’ve accepted the SaL series as canon for so long that all the new jelsa stuff is so jarring to see, bc people be ignoring my man Pitch and I don’t understand- waaaaait

Oh god the Jelsa stuff, lol.

None of that stuff existed when the movie first came out, so the only like, ‘ship wars’ (which weren’t really very warring at all) was like, whether you shipped Jack with Bunnymund or Pitch (or rarely, Toothiana). That was it.

But then like, the Jack/Hiccup, Jack/Elsa, Jack/Merida, Jack/WHOMEVER started and it was like OH HE’S THE CHILDREN’S FILM ANIMATION BICYCLE. Everyone gets to take a ride, lmao.

I don’t begrudge them, but I did have to unfollow the ‘jack frost’ tag for a while because it just got a bit overwhelming. At least we’ll always have blackice and a whole bunch of Jack/Pitch fics to remember him by. :D

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I’ve been a SaL stan for literally a million years and I have /never/ read the bit where Jack tops. I remember reading it for the first time and literally doing that awkward scroll to get past it bc I just,,, couldn’t, no matter how much I love your writing lol

God bless solidarity, my friend :D

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Hiya, I just finished reading the first book of SAL verse and ohhhh boy, I now remember why I had to keep reading even though I had 8am classes the first time I finished book one at 3am. It’s just... wow. Anyways, my question is; if Jack had been the one to be possessed by the shadows, is there anything in the world that could have recovered him? Something to do with his sister, maybe? Also was he supposed to be possessed, like that’s what Ondine saw in his future, but pitch changed the course?

Hiya anon! Firstly, get some sleep! :D

If Jack had been the one to be possessed by the shadows, is there anything in the world that could have recovered him? 

I mean, possibly, yes, but I never thought he’d recover from it anyway. Like even if he was ‘rescued’ I think it would break the Jack Frost that I wrote in the SALverse (and it nearly kills him in TGATNW, the other long Rise of the Guardian fic I’ve written). Like, Jack in SAL has a super fragile psyche, even if he could have been saved (and no, I don’t think something with his sister would have done it necessarily, I think it would have needed to be light-exorcism related)...the whole story would have turned into ‘and Pitch was left with a non-functioning spirit and then the world was defeated by Augus and team the end.’ It wasn’t a story I had any interest in writing.

Also was he supposed to be possessed, like that’s what Ondine saw in his future, but pitch changed the course?             

Not exactly. I liked the dual meaning, that Ondine seeing shadows made everyone assume Jack was going to be possessed (you can see this, from memory, in some of the comments). But that it could also be that Jack’s life would be filled with the shadows of loss - which is exactly what happens. He loses Pitch, because of the Darkness, and he loses a great deal more in ISWF (which you will see as you keep reading). If anything, he is far more traumatised by events in ISWF than he ever is in FtDWR. It is the darker of the two stories. That’s why it has the title ‘Into Shadows We Fall.’ Even though Jack isn’t the one literally possessed, he is the one who mentally falls into darkness because of what he loses. 

As Ondine says, she can’t see past the day after with Jack. And she certainly doesn’t see that Jack will definitively get possessed or not get possessed by the Darkness. (I think if she had seen Jack getting actually possessed, she would have been like, UM HOW ABOUT YOU STAY RIGHT HERE).

But I always liked the ambiguity at the time. I knew readers would interpret it and expect Jack to get possessed, and I was always pretty vague about it in comments and asks at the time. I sort of wanted the misdirect - that people would expect Jack to get possessed, only for it to be - at the end - Pitch, so we see the return of the Nightmare King. It was a very satisfying thing to write. :)

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As someone that read both the original and edited versions of SALverse... I didn’t notice too much of a change because like you said you cut out only like 4% of the total words. But everything just seemed to flow a lot smoother in the new version. Definitely preferred the edited.

Thanks anon <3

Tbh it happens a lot more than people realise! Like, I told everyone about the SAL edits, but I’ve since gone back and tweaked things in almost everything I’ve written - not huge edits, but if I notice typos and grammar mistakes on a reread, you can bet I sneak back and in and remove them or change them.

Sometimes it’s purely selfish, I want to be able to reread without going ‘OH NO PIA OH NO U FORGOT THIS’ but sometimes it’s also just ‘well this seems inconvenient I’m going to fix that.’ In part the changes to SAL were because I got tired of reading Jack angsting about the same thing for 2,000 words when he could do it just as well (if not better) in 1,750 words. He was still gonna do it just...not in the same way.

The fact is I don’t go back and tell people about edit changes anymore. Sometimes it’s typos and grammar, a few times it’s been sneaky continuity fixes that I could get to quickly. The best way to preserve the original unchanged story is to just download it in multiple formats once it’s finished (or even while it’s ongoing), but honestly, I wouldn’t edit them if I didn’t think it was doing a profound service to the story because once a story is finished I’m lazy and don’t really want to change it lmao <3

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Okay sO finding out you took out 10,000 words from SALverse makes me sad cos that’s 10,000 words I never got to read, I only got into your works like half a year ago ): sadness

I mean you’re doing a great job of literally proving my point, anon, that sometimes going back and editing serials isn’t always a fun process for the author, even though they’re literally doing it to serve the story and the readers of the future, lmao. In part, I did that editing for people like you, to make the story more enjoyable.

I’d suggest trusting me - the author - and my choices. If you liked the story at all, chances are the editing helped to shape that.

Most of the choices were to remove excessive sentences (i.e. Jack thinking the same thing in five different ways in five consecutive paragraphs on a regular basis, which bogged down pacing), to fix grammar errors (it’s still not free of those entirely but it’s better than it was), to fix some formatting errors, and to fix continuity errors in characterisation (i.e. the make the dialogue more realistic or appropriate for their character, and in the cases of Gwyn and Augus, to make their characterisation more Game Theory appropriate). Ultimately, 10,000 words represents only 4% of the story, and given it’s a solid 400,000 words. It was an extremely light edit, sensitive to preserving the scenes that people fell in love with.

To date, in over 5 years, not a single person who read the original has come back and asked for any of the edited content to be returned.

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Holy shit I’ve been reading Fae Tales for like a year now and I never realised you had Jack/Pitch fics hOW DID I MISS THIS??? TIME TO GO READ

Hee,

Tbh, Fae Tales wouldn’t exist without those fics. Because Augus and Gwyn started as side OCs in From the Darkness We Rise and Into Shadows We Fall. So you can see the earliest baby versions of them, and the others too. :D It was a different time.

It’s also...so nice getting this message because...most people find me through those fics and I’m so used to that and like now it’s the other way around and this feels like I’ve come full circle and it’s just dsklfjsa very nice.

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So I'm rereading SAL and got curious, if Jack had actually stayed in the like to become fae his class would be? Court given how powerful his frost is or something lower?

His raw power doesn’t actually influence his status at all (which is how the Nain Rouge can be one of the most powerful fae in the world even as underfae).

Status is only ever awarded through inheritance, or given by the monarchy. If he’d stayed in the lake to become fae, he would have been underfae - which is the default. He had nothing to inherit, and no monarch to give him something higher.

That’s also how Augus can be born underfae despite being the most powerful waterhorse to have existed in the fae realm.