Fic Update: "Sleep of the Just" Prologue
Oct. 28th, 2009 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodel Well, I went and did it. I've branched outside the Archanea ghetto and put out the first part of my first piece of FE8 fiction. "Sleep of the Just" is post-game, and hence post-war, political intrigue-type stuff featuring the one and only Innes. Expect a deeply negative portrayal of Ephraim and a look at all the ills of reconstruction. And some Innes/Vanessa.
The fic is here. Many thanks to Writer Awakened for being my beta! I needs me a beta because FE8 has a vastly more lengthy script than I'm used to. It also has actual fans.
ETA: Despite the number of people on ffnet who claim they want FE8 'fic, I can count the number of people who checked out the Prologue on my fingers. I added a disclaimer to the summary specifying that the story is not a romance and that the pairings involved are canon, a polite way of stating the 'fic is a no-yaoi zone, in case the threat of yaoi is scaring people off. In the meantime, people are still reading what they always read-- "The End of Love" and "The Time Remaining."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-01 06:25 am (UTC)If push comes to shove, you could list a few pairings in your summary, see if that'll attract viewers. The old bait and switch: Come for the romance, stay for the intrigue. Hey, sex sells. And in fanfiction-land, romance sells even without the horizontal mambo (although that certainly does help. I can say with certainty that sexiness does = MASSIVE HITS)
If it's any consolation, you're not alone, my friend.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-01 01:25 pm (UTC)I'd backed off from advertising any canon pairings, because it's my view that anything canon is fair game (OK, I guess Ephraim/Eirika warrants a label). And, IMO, advertising the pairings in "Sleep of the Just" kind of ruins some plot points. I mean, it's not an Seth/Eirika/Saleh love triangle, and calling the Vanessa/Innes/L'Arachel thing a love triangle doesn't quite convey what's going on. The Innes/Eirika content is a phantom, and the Eph/Tana is just there in the background and not remotely romantic as Innes perceives it. Meh. I overthink everything.
Ah, well. Fortunately, I'm not in this for the hits. I just find it funny that, when polled, people *say* they want genfic and FE8 fic and "something different." Time will tell....
What's your most popular (and least so) work, WA?
no subject
Date: 2009-11-03 05:15 am (UTC)My least popular work is...everything else. :|
no subject
Date: 2009-11-03 01:42 pm (UTC)It's a shame that your more ambitious works are less popular than *that*!
no subject
Date: 2009-11-04 04:30 am (UTC)Hey, at least you're honest :P When I said it was crappy, I wasn't just being modest; it's reeeally crappy. XP I don't want to take it down because I'd be losing basically my most popular FE commodity and alienating some of my old fans...but I'm still not proud of it. XDD;;
But it's interesting to watch a person (especially when it's your own self) progress and see their writing styles change. A good long while after writing a piece, you tend to distance yourself emotionally from that work,, and after a while more, you distance yourself intellectually from it. I read...uh, I think it was Stephen King's On Writing, where he said to let anything you're working on sit for several months before going back to do the final edits, because only time can help create that sort of self-objectivity. I'm FAR too impatient to wait that long, but I do think that idea has some merit :P