#I can't NOT monetize my hobbies but. at least i like them and am somewhat decent at them i guess lol

[lurkiestvoid]

So I haven't really said anything about this to anyone except my wife yet because I'm a notorious flake and 'tell ppl abt ur projects so u feel compelled to finish them' has the opposite effect on me and I didn't wanna jinx myself

But anyways, unimportant but still newsy: a Project of mine is shaping up into something kinda cool.

For the last two months I have been working on a tightly-knit series of Dragon Age fics that spans all my Heroes and companions over a minimum of 25 years, intricately weaving a custom world state, with prologues and drabbles and everything else I want in my personal canon, leading up to and including Veilguard (once I get my hands on it, anyway -- I have a decent outline for it already though) and beyond. I've been doing it for myself, but I'm having so much fun I wanna throw it up on AO3 when it's polished a bit.

I have never done anything like this before nor gotten so far into it so I'm really psyched about it! I've written fic, sure, and gotten decent reception, but it's been rare and tiny; I've written original fic, but usually got stuck a few chapters in and abandoned it. This shit is coming out sideways as one whole entire baby and it is as surprising as it is painfully life-changing.

More about The Project under the cut.

The Prologues fic will cover everyone pre-Origins, eventually, or later/younger characters before their official appearances. Then, there are four Main Fics, one for each O/2/I/V, I haven't yet decided if I'll split them up or run it as the massive interconnected beast it really is. ...I also have some derivative 'original' fic loosely planned for after a 100+yr time skip but that's separate There will certainly be plenty of smut in a variety of combinations and relationships, buuuut I think I'm going to post all that together as its own separate semi-canon drabbles fic just to keep things tidy and because I do have a kid who is soon to be unleashed on the internet who is already begging for AO3 i might post it under a secondary account

There will be many playlists.

General idea: The world of Thedas and both major and minor plotlines become massively but reasonably Changed by player choices, character deaths, character survivals, and by continual involvement of the Heroes and their companions and allies, in some form or fashion. 'Alternative' player-character Wardens/Inquisitors/Rooks survive the character creator screen, at least for a while. Chapters mostly explore the "in between" scenes of relationships, personal and interpersonal growth, shenanigans, minor events and conflicts, the intricacies of sociopolitics, processing the Horrors, and with major/familiar plot points told from interesting perspectives or other changes, or skimmed for brevity. No "party sizes" we adventure as a group, occasionally splitting into teams to delegate or pinch; this, too, changes some things. Filling in plot/lore holes and probably making new ones, but all for fun. And because Bioware is fucking terrified of children, apparently (I refuse to believe virtually zero children have any affect on half a century of history or really any lore at all, nor that 60%+ of all the Big Names aren't constantly fucking nasty style throughout the halls of power and the alley slums alike) there will be plenty of kids running around and mucking things up for everyone, adorably or otherwise, and explorations of tons of different family types. (Kieran matters again. So does Feynriel, and Connor, and the like 2-3 other kids we ever see across games. Now plus gaggles of baby OCs, sprinkled throughout)

Total rough-draft notes word count is currently sitting over 300k. My "notes" generally consist of bulleted list summaries and quick word-vomit snippets while sitting in traffic so I don't forget ideas, and a few 3k-12k rough draft chapters. I recently moved into my first major editing phase, which will take a few weeks, then I'll do a second writing phase to fill in gaps, straighten out details, rewrite scenes, etc, and a second editing phase where I repeatedly reread and hunt typos/dangling participles/whatever. And then I'll start feeding it chronologically to AO3, one chapter at a time, once a week for like a whole fucking year or three

It's... uh, big. Big project. Massive. Why am I doing it? I don't know but I am VISCERALLY COMPELLED to do this, I have not been in control of my actions for like two months and the consistent high rate at which this has poured out of me has been MIND-BOGGLING to experience. I have been possessed by whichever spirit of Inspiration finally gave up on George R R Martin, is my best guess. But hey, if it works, which is seems to be working VERY FUCKING WELL, I'm going to use this exact formula to plow through years of abandoned novel ideas.

OH AND I'm going to be doing fanart the whole time, both of canon and fanon characters. Dustin off the lil Wacom and getting back to work. I'm going to start taking commissions again also (not just yet) and maybe start a BlueSky for that I guess. So, uh. Yay productivity? But if anyone is interested in beta reading or has art requests, hit me up and I'll start putting out sometime probably after xmas lol