Notes and Errata of Mark of the Asphodel

So, this was a Western AU that I really wanted to write but I wasn't sure where to develop it. It wasn't just a Western AU, as it had a touch of what I like to call "arc-light punk" and then got into stuff like heavier-than-air flight and the obsolescence of old sabers-n-cavalry warfare. But straight-up retellings of game plot, even in an alternate setting, just don't hold my attention and so it's been sitting untouched since before my laptop crashed in March.

I guess it'll go here, for now, just to prove it existed.

Public Enemies

 

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

 

( Gen2 Wild West AU with a twist... )

Went and uploaded Chapters 2, 3, and 4 in recent days.

It occurred to me three chapters in that the dynamic between Lester, Faval, and Dew is reminiscent of old Penny Arcade strips featuring Tycho, Gabe, and Div the sentient DIVX machine.

I think I'm OK with this.
 

HEY.

I finally finished that Journalist!Innes w/ mandatory Innes/Gerik content AU.  It's only a year past the deadline.

OK.  It's set in a 1920's Magvel, except Magvel's recast as New York City, and there are mashup references to other gameverses and Magvel fandom in-jokes.  And stuff.

I wrote most of it on the train from Chicago after having a block on it for a year.  I really wanted to see Innes holding a very silly drink.

So, back in the heady days of 2009, I started writing something called "Steadfast Companion."  It rose out of Abel's character ending in FE11: "He was to be married; but in the end his fellow knights were his most steadfast companions."

Given what I knew of Abel, and because FE12 hadn't been announced yet, I thought FE11 might be some weird standalone reboot in which Abel backed out of marrying Est or something, and the story in question (let's call it SC#1) was about that.  It was just a little ambiguous one-shot about Abel, Cain, and Est.  Anyway, it never got finished or published because I got caught up in more ambitious ideas.

( Discussion of the Hardest 'Fic Ever )

Turns out the Gen 2 girls are kinda difficult to rate, so let's detour through Gen 1.

Not all of them mind.  Just some highlights.

Same rules as before.

( Cuuuuuuut. )

Next time, we'll actually tackle the Gen 2 ladies.

Took a stab at the ending-sentence meme the rest of y'all are doing and realized a few 'fics in I end things with dark/light imagery waaaaay too often. C'est la vie.

Anyway, how 'bout this: closing sentences to WIPs I would rather like to finish some day?

( Stuff. Spoilers for 'fic that may not get published, in a sense. )

The last of these being a piece of period-appropriate sentimentalism IMO.

Stolen from Ammie on tumblr.

Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and stick that selection in a comment. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s going on in the character’s heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

And I do mean "any," so feel free to poke at Archanea-fic, Magvel-fic, and crackfic in addition to the Jugdral-centric stuff.  Obviously I ought to remember the more recent scribbles with more clarity and depth but if you go after "Starchild" or "Another Piece of Blue" or whatever I should have something to say.

Meme ganked from Ammie and Lua. Post the first lines of your last 21 fics.

I'm not counting time/place stamps unless they're part of the actual 'fic structure. I will count epigraphs if there are any.

1: "Well, you look out of mortal danger."
2: "Lords above, we give you thanks for the food upon our table. Bless the toil of those who produced it, bless the hands that prepared it and the guests who come to share with us tonight. In the name of blessed Ethnia and her servants..."
3: "Oh, Ishtar, did you know there was a beautiful flower garden in the yard? Let's go take a look."
4: The lantern in Patty's hand didn't do much against the ink-black darkness of the catacombs beneath Belhalla.
5: One ounce of gold for an ounce of salt.
6: Flashes of light, like the sparks thrown off by a stoked fire, floated through Arthur's head in the moments before he opened his eyes.
7: They said that if he just kept his eyes fixed on the horizon, he'd stop being sick.
8: Nanna counted out her own breaths- seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty- as she felt the blood coursing through her father's left wrist.
9: She never has forgotten that the Mother Abbess did not want to teach her.
10: Eirika kept glancing down at her hands during the drive.
11: Lachesis thought they'd been getting by with very little until the hour came to pack up their lives.
12: Cheap bracelets touched in gilt jangled against each other as Laylea stretched her legs out on the settee.
13: When Leif woke that morning, he saw snow piled thick on the windowsill outside his room.
14: "Lord Azel."
15: The imminent arrival of their guest sent Lady Fee into a tizzy; her pleasant voice turned sharp and childish, strands of her short hair floated every-which-way, and even her earrings seemed off-kilter as she rushed about the estate making preparations.
16: (I was a child, I wasn't worried)
17: Small chips. One side rough, the other smooth, like a wave-polished shell.
18: In a sense, it was all Kyle's fault.
19: It looked innocent enough, corked inside of its bottle.
20: The first year/Too old to be a daughter. Too young to be a rival.
21: Innes blew a perfect failure of a smoke ring, which fit with the way everything else was headed that particular session.
Bonus (the most recent WIP I worked on): Glade ran his fingers through his hair in a vain attempt to tame the cowlick at he back of his head.

I like how going through the last 21 takes me clean back to the Archanea/Magvel stuff.  Basically, I've abandoned a previous habit of writing some kind of scene-establishing descriptive passage and just tend to dump the reader right into the 'fic.  The opening lines are about evenly divided between "thematic-type thing that is relevant to Larger Things" and "the 'fic starts here," I guess.

Dear Chrom/male!Robin shippers:

I like this pairing.  Wouldn't mind reading 'fic for it.  However, if the "Avatar" you're writing about is not the character from the actual game, the one who has loads and loads of conversations with every playable character defining his (or her) personality, but is instead an OC in the Strategist role bearing the looks and name of "your self-insert," there is a special place in FANFICTION HELL for you.

k'thx'bai

PS: But thank you for admitting it up front so I don't waste my time with your Gary Stu.  

I don't flog my 'fics here much anymore, in part because I'm embarrassed about ratio of newer Jugdral-type things to older FE8/Archanea/mash-up things that remain unfinished.  But this one I did want to share.

While You Were Sleeping is based on what I call the "Sleeping Beauty Azel" scenario from Kaga's note collection, in which Azel spends the time-skip and Celice's war in a state of suspended animation in the secret basement of Barhara Palace (no, really).  After the war, he gets discovered and revived and comes face-to-face with the now-grown kidlets and, well, everyone else.  

( Tangential rant and explanation )
Anyway I am having a great deal of fun with this one, even when it's hitting on some darker stuff that is quite relevant to RL at this moment.