I was going to wait until I finished it to message you, but I'm so antsy!! I finally got around to rereading and finishing Cantata after starting it over a year ago (such an engaging and thoughtful work, I adore it), and ofc had to dive into the rest of Opus immediately after. I spent half of Opus white knuckled, HAD to know when sam and kaidan were finally going to let go, until it hit me like a truck that you werent going to let them have it until right before Alchera (you absolute DEVIL)
I'm always in it for the pining, its my favorite trope, and while I love the eventual admittance/happy ending, fics always lose me after the characters have their big romantic moment. But with the end of Sonata, you had me absolutely hooked!! Liara's account of the collector attack in Fugue is an absolute masterpiece. I was frozen, or on the verge of tears. Her realization that Kaidan would have sacrificed her and everyone on deck to save Sam was a lightning bolt. And watching Kaidan forced to leave Sam behind was HEARTBREAKING
All that to say I am so impressed in your ability to use your readers' knowledge of narrative events to build suspense. I haven't been able to put this story down. Can't wait to dive into ch4 later and watch Kaidan implode :')
(and If Horizon isnt addressed in Fugue, Ill be back later to beg you to write it)
What an amazing comment to get. Thank you. <3
I've often called Sonata the happiest sad story I've ever written, because the story itself is a blind source of joy until you pull your gaze back and realize where it sits in the timeline.
One of the really fascinating things about fanfic to me being able to depend on the reader already knowing what's going to happen and use it as a tool. Stories like Cantata, Sonata, and Fugue all scribble outside the canon lines, but part of what makes them work is that looming knowledge of what lurks around the next corner.
Which is why eight seconds after I contemplated whether Cantata was the kind of story you could file the serial numbers off off and publish, I decided it wasn't. Cantata depends on the reader knowing who Shepard becomes. The role he eventually plays. Without it, the foreshadowing falls flat and the story loses a lot of depth. Sonata becomes a completely different story when you realize how close it sits to Alchera. And the countdown clock on the second chapter of Fugue is like a slowly tightening noose because you know that happiness is about to come crashing down, and it's more awful because the characters have no idea.
I love, love, love that people are DYING to get to Horizon. Because you know it's coming. You know it's going to happen. It's fanfic, and you know how the canon story goes. Horizon is coming.
I can tell you this. It's going to be awful. Everything that could go wrong does go wrong. Everyone does the best they can with what they have, but everyone has different pieces, or the wrong pieces.
It's a clash of the inevitable, and no one is to blame, but that means there's nowhere to direct the anger, so it goes places it shouldn't, because it has to go somewhere.
It's awful. And I can't wait.