#mal is currently working on...

[malchants]

I’m just going to go sit in this corner and write a fairy-tale AU...

Hey, at least I’m writing again. I’m doing a fairy-tale riff on Swan Lake, with the kind of irreverent wth attitude in which I wrote ´Romance of the daisy´and ´burden of your gratitude´, so we’ll see what happens. 

In other news, there´s still a couple of days left on ficfacers auction to bid on a whole mass of talented artists, all for Random Acts. Come and give me a good excuse to write :) 

[malchants]

The cover art for the second large arc of the Outlands series, Sons of the Path. Monsters from higher dimensions, ancient Egyptians, check and check. This may not be the definitive version of the cover yet, I’m still playing with the weathering effect and wondering if it works or not... Also the papyrus material might need adjusting. Made on Ibis Paint X if anyone’s interested, they have powerful tools at their disposal that gives me a lot of short cuts. I like short cuts...

The chthonian monster from the nether pits is based on the cuttle fish. Cuttle fish are the spawns of Cthulhu waiting to grow up and devour the world and we’re too busy snacking on calamari to notice. Fools, I tell you, we are all fools. 

[malchants]

Currently working on...

I’m currently working on a 4-5 chapter Destiel (fantasy AU), should be out soon, matter of a week or two at most. Here’s the summary so far (subject to change, naturally):

“Saving the king of the land from certain death is… romantic? Really? Castiel has a hard time wrapping his head around that, but as a fallen angel who’s only become mortal one hot minute ago, the whole of humanity is one big confusing puzzle to him. Add that to the pile of perplexing human quirks...

Fortunately King Dean does not actually know it was Castiel who saved his life, and the latter intends to keep it that way. He finds the idea of a one-sided bond of gratitude between them… unappealing for some reason. He prefers his sacrifice to remain unrequited. Dean’s keen on finding his savior, and hell, the whole kingdom seems to think this person is his predestined love interest, but that’s not an issue. It’s not like someone else is going to pop up out of the woodwork to claim responsibility for Castiel’s good deed.” 

I was so happy with my previous fantasy AU “The Romance of the Daisy” that I felt inspired to write another in the same vein. However, ‘Daisy’ was sweetly sad and pining, and this one... well, there’s a lot of crap bugging me in my life right now and maybe that’s why this one has a palpable undercurrent of undirected rage running through it, or at least it seems so to me. Ah well, whatever allows me to exorcise my demons (and also butcher them, douse them in holy water and salt the remains.)

I’ve put a placeholder title of “Unrequited” on this fic so far, but I’m hesitating between that or the more poetic “The Burden of Your Gratitude”. Argh... The hardest thing for me is to find a powerful title for my fics, and next is to write a good summary that truly encapsulates what the story is without going over too long. Next to that, writing the actual fic is a doddle...

[malchants]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 2: Magic vs Miracle

In which Castiel wakes up to find out that a fairytale has taken place without his permission.

[malchants]

Time distribution: effort vs productivity

Distribution of writing time today:

Hour 1: I write 6 pages of intense fighting sequence followed by several pleased re-reads, editing, correction, etc. I feel accomplished. I could do this all day.

Hour 2: I stare at the one line earmarked as ‘this is where the romantic conclusion starts’. I stare some more. I surf the web and check my Tumblr. I stare at the line for  a few more minutes. I go and have a drink. Clean the kitchen because I noticed it was dirty while having that drink. I go back to staring at the blank page. I play a game with the spawn. I go back and type in a few lines, delete them immediately. I reread what I wrote in Hour 1 and decide I still really like it and then I write two short sentences at the end of the fic and call it a day and try to feel accomplished.

Why is it so haaaaaaaaaaard....

[malchants]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

In which six demons jump an ex-angel who's only recently had his heart broken, a case of Worst Timing Ever.

[malchants]

*headdesk*

I’m still posting Outlands onto Royal Roads, taking the time to go over each chapter for readability one last time, and also to normalize the naming conventions of the various Per Gathas terms related to the passers, the crossings etc.

At which point I found out that, despite ten years and numerous rereads since, I made a rather stoopid plot point mistake in the way the Outland crossings work and hadn’t noticed it until now. 

Duh!!

Well, that’s fixed... fortunately I could actually patch it with little pain. At least I hope; there might be some detail that trips me up in a later chapter that I can no longer exactly remember. 

If anyone’s curious: I had this idea that the hostels are visible in the circles whatever country you’re viewing them from. So in chapter 13, the old passer goes back to her inn, visible to Ryou, and there she gets attacked by the dog-creature.

But this immediately brings up several logic flaws (a-duh!). First off, the paths have a start and an end. Where’s the inn on the other end in this scenario? There has to be something, because paths can lead to different places depending on the movement of the spiral, so unless there’s a whole lot of ‘dead end’ crossings dotted over the Outlands (which would be a waste of a highly valued resource), then there should be an inn or at least something to allow passers to pick up customers and bring them in the opposite direction, or to other destinations entirely. So when a passage is open, there should be two inns visible, on each side of the river bisecting the stone circles. Which actually sounded great and I felt tempted to go for that option. But then you’d see people crossing from one to the other, which is not visually what I’d set up in any of my other chapters. It would also give a visual clue in one of the Sons of the Path chapters that there’s a problem, which would involve considerable rewriting of that section and perhaps even serious issues with the sequence of the action. I love the smell of plotholes in the morning... *plays Charge of the Valkyries*

So I went for the simplest fix, which hopefully won’t bite me in the ass later on, which is to change the chapter 13 scene around and remove the inn, and adding a shed where passers wait for return passengers for awhile (it’s established that this particular crossing is little used and doesn’t have its own passer.) 

I’m also adding other details or fixing a few other small mistakes here and there in the text. If anyone’s curious, you can follow the new-and-improved Outlands here. I am also updating as I go on AO3, but it’s harder to tell there which chapter has gotten a makeover yet and which hasn’t, so RR might be the better options (plus, it’ll give me some more eyes on it, more Reads in my RR stats, and make sure I’m not making other mistakes while fixing those...)

[malchants]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

In which we learn that a fairy-tale, like nature, abhors a vacuum, and will seek to fill in its lack of happy ending by any means necessary. Results may vary...