I absolutely adore atwccd, as sad as it is, it's a really cool idea to explore. You start the story thinking at the characters 'if you are reaped and die quickly in the arena may be the best case scenario for you' because surviving in the games might be easier than surviving as a victor.
Your writing is great, like, this is a Hunger Games AU so on some level I can guess what is going to happen because I know the source (the books) and read the tags, but is still unexpected, I had the same ice cold realization Annabeth has that her life is not the one she should be worried about, even if I knew the story of Percy's sponsor was coming. But I didn't see the whole thing with the reaping and the threat towards Estelle coming! Real gut punch there!
Like I said, cool idea to explore because the story really sucks you in
But at the same time I'm thinking : this is a very sad story, but you're actually posting it so... What in the world was that UFS sequel about for it to never see the light of the sun? ☀️🤣
aah thank you!! I'm so happy you're enjoying it so far <33 That's exactly what I was hoping people would get out of it, so it makes me really happy to hear that feedback!!! I think most of y'all basically know what's coming, but I think it's safe to say I have one more trick up my sleeve for the last chapter lol
As for the UFS sequel... oh boy 😅 in some ways its really not as bad as atwccd, but I think it's more the blatant tone shift from UFS to the unnamed sequel that would be jarring to people than the content, necessarily.
The thing about UFS (and I am about to go on a Tangent here but I rarely have an excuse to talk about it so I have to take whatever chances I can get) is that I wrote it after taking a post-colonial literature class with an absolutely brilliant professor who really changed my point of view on a lot of things and really expanded the ways in which I view literature. UFS is really heavily inspired by a lot of themes that are common in post-colonial lit; homecomings, fractured or conflicting allegiances, otherness/the struggle to belong, etc.
UFS obviously has a happy ending (or bittersweet, whatever, mostly happy) but that's almost entirely because you get to imagine what happens next. The mysterious island paradise Percy (and eventually Annabeth) call home is a paradise because we know nothing about it. We don't know its complexities, or what struggles its faced in its isolation, or how Annabeth will adjust to such an extreme difference.
There's an idea in post-colonial literature that the homeland is often viewed as a paradise, this faultless, unreachable place. That if you could just go home, everything would be okay. But there are also a lot of books that subvert this idea (my favorite being White Teeth by Zadie Smith), that say that no, actually, home is not perfect. Home may be more fucked up than where you are now. Home may not even exist anymore, not how you remember it.
I think UFS itself very much plays into the first idea (home is paradise, home fixes everything, if you can go home you will be saved) and the ideas I have for the sequel play into the second (home will not solve your problems, home might actually fuck you up more). And I just think that would make people really sad and I don't want to do it 😭
so like, TLDR: the things I put them through are bad but not atwccd bad, but its mostly the way that it would ruin the perception of the ending of UFS that makes me hesitate to ever post any of it.
