#htgha

[flame-of-tar-valon]

musings on ffxiv politics in my very not-canon fanfic world:

so. firstly. I'm not precisely making any of these changes in the pursuit of 'realism'. I don't care how fantastical they are, really. any added complexity I introduce is purely in the interest of making them more interesting to write, for me.

now, a bit of context: I am a fan of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. in this series there is a focus on (fantasy) political maneuvering known as Daes Dae'mar, or the Game of Houses. this is essentially the process by which members of an aristocratic monarchy compete against one another for social position and political power, up to and including claims for thrones. Daes Dae'mar was very influential on my developing adolescent brain, to the point that two of my earliest tumblr urls were direct references to it.

so, naturally, I am motivated to flesh out the systems of governance for all of the relevant city-states. a lot of these are fleshed out in lore books or supplemental materials, but I am not referencing them while writing this post. I will reference them when writing my fic, though, so please bear with me if anything seems off. now, onto the meat of this post.

Part 1: Ul'dah

Ul'dah is the easiest, because it is the city-state with the most political intrigue of all of them. conflicts between the Sultana and the Syndicate erupt constantly, most notably in the 2.x MSQ. what I dislike about this is the way the game bends over backwards to keep the status quo. nanamo is a naive, powerless figurehead who wants to abdicate, but is poisoned before she can by a challenger. but yet ANOTHER opponent of hers swapped out the poison for a nonlethal one and orchestrated the former's execution at the hands of the sultana's fiercest defender! adeledji is an antagonist who wants to disrupt the status quo and has to be stopped; lolorito, on the other hand, profits from stability, so he saves the sultana's life, orchestrates adeleji's downfall, and covers up the entire thing to keep the peace — with strings attached.

how am I planning to change Ul'dah politics? first, by expanding the arena of potential future Syndicate members. the Syndicate is comprised of the six individuals who have provided the most wealth to the city, allegedly. how, then, is this wealth determined? is this a table where anyone rich enough can outbid someone for a seat? in my opinion, there needs to be competition for stations, influence, and financial power. maybe some of the seats are permanent: even just the head of the nation's military and church, respectively, leaving the other four seats up for grabs. THEN actually show the group of people vying for those last seats, show what happens when power changes hands — in canon, I'm not sure if the seats vacated by adeledji and raubahn were ever filled (unless pipin inherited his father's seat).

speaking of showing change: I don't want Nanamo to stay on the throne. she should dissolve the monarchy the way she originally planned to. yes it was naive, but the message of "oops ok I'll stay on the throne but learn to be more like lolorito but it's a good thing because I still have my pure heart <3" isn't something I'm interested in writing. have her abdicate. let it be messy. let her live a new life at the Silver Bazaar under a fake name.

Part 2: Limsa Lominsa

so Limsa Lominsa is in a really weird place as the most politically compelling to me and also the most disappointing execution to me. you have a bunch of major pirate* powers — in order to be a contender, all you need is a ship and a crew — and every seven years they have a contest and whoever wins is the dictator for the next seven years. that person's crew becomes the national military, but every other pirate crew is still out there, so the dictator needs to keep all her opposition happy. the dictator controls basically everything that is national — military, trade, land, treaties, law, whatnot.

to boil that down to "yeah the current ruler paused elections under martial law, outlawed piracy, and all three major opposition crews are fine with all that" is a bit of a letdown. sicard's duel was so cool! and hyllfyr's intervention was also badass! but I want things to be more complicated.

merlwyb's martial law has to end at some point. when it does, who will win rulership next, and what will her successor do with her ban on piracy and all her peace treaties? other crews won't always be content with not getting a seat at the planning table. but aside from the dictatorial crisis, consider: how is it decided which crews are politically significant enough to be worth mentioning? aside from merlwyb's League of Lost Bastards, there's rhoswen and carvallain who... have their thing going on, and hyllfyr who seems to just endorse merlwyb.

I want to explore how ambitious pirates with no fondness for taking orders scheme to rise to the top of the food chain, whether by taking the helm of the current powers or by steering their own crews into places of significance. I want to wade into the issue of how a curious libertarian autocracy accustomed to changing hands every seven years will need to change its inner workings to weather the tides of a changing political landscape as a post-piracy paradise.

also I love sicard. he will be a top player of Daes Dae'mar in my fic (and already is! if you haven't read How to Go Home Again, he's in [newly revised] chapter 2. gotta show up early to the msq these days. )

Part 3: Gridania

ok before I get started let me just say: I recently read that E-Sumi-Yan used to be the elder seedseer back at the start of 1.0. I'm bringing that back. nothing against Kan-E, it's just that for a position with 'Elder' in the title, a guy 200 years older than you probably deserves it more.

ok anyways. from what I read, Gridania is governed by a Seedseer Council who deliberate and discuss every issue of import before coming to a consensus. but on the brink of calamity, this slow deliberation was counterproductive, so they switched to just one person making decisions: Kan-E-Senna. I think they should switch back.

politics in Gridania seem to be much less linked to access to station and power, and much more linked to vested authority to carry out one's whims. those who are able and trained to interpret the elementals' will are given a lot of leeway in how they enforce their interpretation. they are not free from bias (looking at you, Hearer Marmaduke).

as it is presented ingame, there is not much room for the same internal politics in Gridania as in Ul'dah or Limsa Lominsa. I, however, think this is to Gridania's detriment, as internal political intrigue is one of the best ways to provide depth and investment into a setting.

in my fic, Gridania gets a couple shakeups, notably a mini-Greenwrath which calls the region's relationship to the Elementals into question. in the wake of this, there's groups of people who lose faith in entrusting the entire functioning of the city-state to the religious elite, and struggles for power take on a very "I know how to fix things better than they do" stance. I'm not fully sure what this will look like — Ul'dah has the Syndicate, and Limsa has the great pirate powers, but Gridania lacks a significant rulership opposition group. but I really WANT there to be one. Gridania needs it the most.

I think in order for that to happen, though, three region needs to stop being the Elementals' playpen. and I think the only way to stop painting it as such is to show how the Elementals in other parts of the world live. you cannot tell me that between Raincatcher Gully and Rootslake, only one of them has enough nature spirits to be significant to the running of that nation's government. (it probably has something to do with Amdapor, but I need to refresh my memory of the lore before I plan anything).

anyways. I'm struggling with planning the intrigue in the gridania chapters of my fic right now. that's why I decided to type this long-ass post.

[flame-of-tar-valon]

man... the attention I get from htgha is super low, I only have somewhere between two and five dedicated readers. and like, yeah I've been on a multi month hiatus, maybe I'd have more readers if I posted biweekly still, but I wouldn't bet on it.

so while I get the whole "lack of engagement kills fanfic writers" and I do sympathize, if I was doing it for engagement I would never have started writing. all of the fanfic writing I've done (except for a h*rry p*tter au in 2014 (dead to me) and a bnha au in 2020 (also lost interest)) has been for a single, tiny friend group or fandom group where participation is... just part of the game.

I don't care if strangers don't see or don't like or don't comment on my fic, I have the gift recipient and my beta reader and the three or four people I brainstorm or gush over fic ideas with and my college friend who isn't in any of my fandoms but is "good at inferring what fandom-specific things mean".

I'm not saying everyone should be happy with such a thing. but back in 2013 when I was trying to publish a fire emblem fic series and writing my first awkward attempt at smut on fanfiction.net, I would always check the engagement graphs and comments — but them going up didn't make me feel happy, it made me anxious. like it gave me stage fright. that's what really made me abort most of my series.

so I know it's a me thing and isn't the norm, but I've always felt a lot more at home discussing fic with friends than receiving engagement from strangers. if I want to ever be a successful novelist I'm gonna have to get over that. but for now as long as I have one person to talk about my fic with, I'm happy.

[flame-of-tar-valon]

🕯️ ⇢ on a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you enjoy editing? why is that?

🦷 ⇢ share some personal wisdom or a life hack you swear on (writing related or not, either way)

🌿 ⇢ give some advice on writer's block and low creativity (i know you and i have very different approaches so i'm curious)

🕯️ I LOVE editing. Too much. In fact that's why last summer when I started writing HtGHA, I challenged myself to avoid the infinite revisions purgatory and just publish it, not caring about how good it ended up. And I was productive for a good few weeks, too! Now that I have a beta reader I do even less initial polishing before I send over my first draft, and having feedback like that makes the editing process even more fun! I just love looking at my initial plan and scraping away the initial prose and sculpting something better in its place. Maybe one day soon I'll post a before-and-after of a good example of my revisions work, who knows. 9/10.

🦷 Life Hack: if you take extended-release ADHD medication like Concerta, keep the medication bottle and some water next to your bed so you can take it as soon as your alarm goes off and before your ADHD makes you forget.

🌿 Man I wish I knew. I've been having writer's block for a while (ok it's only partially writer's block, it's partially just me wanting to do other stuff than writing). The thing that really stops me when I'm writing is I get too intimidated by the scope of the series I started writing and I fall down research and theory and cosmology rabbit holes. The thing that helps me whenever that happens is writing smaller, character-grounded scenes and snippets, whether it's from the next chapter or a scene from twelve chapters down the line.

[flame-of-tar-valon]

the thing I love about early-HtGHA lleidspaer is how attentive and anxious she is about acting in ways that are proper for the social situation, especially when it comes to respecting superiors, etc.

it's such a good starting point for her! it makes sense! it makes almost too much sense! she's obsessed with hierarchy and chain of command! when she goes from new recruit to savior of the world, what happens? she expects deference from everyone. she is in a position to make rules and give orders, and anyone who contests her is stepping out of line. the seeds for her corruption arc were sown from the beginning!!!!!

[flame-of-tar-valon]

I'm going to be at work this evening when my htgha snippet is supposed to come out so hopefully the queue works as scheduled

[flame-of-tar-valon]

I've spent entirely too much time today looking at swords. Anyways I've figured out roughly what Lleidspaer's sword looks like at the start of HtGHA. It isn't really a rapier. She will get a rapier later though. It's somewhere in the middle of these four swords:

https://emuseum.history.org/objects/68929/short-sword-or-hanger

https://emuseum.history.org/objects/15740/french-infantry-hanger

https://emuseum.history.org/objects/102282/french-infantry-smallsword

https://emuseum.history.org/objects/66524/infantry-hanger

[flame-of-tar-valon]

Remember when I said "big things are coming" about the HtGHA end-of-year special? I have now queued all of the posts except for the finale, which I will write closer to the 31st, and we're at 12k words already. And only about 10% of that is already-seen material.

Starting with tomorrow's snippet (Day 4: Milvaneth Sacrarium) it's all new stuff! And since I have it all written and queued I can take the holiday off! (Just kidding I actually can't because I have another project I'm working on.)

[flame-of-tar-valon]

I stayed up late but still woke up only a couple hours after going to bed and can't fall back asleep because I just had a vision in my dream of how my htgha snippets finale should go

[flame-of-tar-valon]

It's 2025! What does that mean for my fic?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

Currently, I am a little behind schedule on my revisions for Chapters 1 and 3. I hope to finish those in the next couple of weeks, along with a reorganization of my notes from all the snippets I've written.

I've written snippets for chapters 10, 15, 19, 23, 28, 32, 36, and 40. For each of these chapters, the previewed portion equates to somewhere around a third of the full chapter, so all told I've written just over 2.5 chapters worth of material in December. Combined with the 6 chapters I've already published and the miscellaneous wip segments floating around, I have about 30 more chapters to write. That's not including all the editing and other stuff.

I know that sounds ambitious, especially for a fic that only really covers MSQ levels 1-17. I have more ideas for continuations later in the plot of ARR, HW, SB, ShB, and probably EW too (though I haven't made it that far in the game yet). I can't commit to all that right now. My imagination balloons project scope out of proportion — I could be looking at outlines projecting a total word count of 600k or more. I can't commit to that right now.

For now, all I want to do is finish How to Go Home Again, which ends with the crew making it back home to the Waking Sands. Everything after that will come when its time is right, or possibly not at all.

If I write one chapter per week, I can finish HtGHA this year. But I'm not going to treat this like homework. If the only way I can get my brain to enjoy the writing process is through collections of snippets like the one I just did for the new year, then I'll probably have one or two more — probably in April and August. I'm not sure yet. I liked showing people glimpses of where my WoLs would end up, but I'm not sure to what extent my readers liked the daily snippet format as a medium. I might just stick to full chapters on Ao3.

In any case, please look forward to the revised introduction chapters 1-3 to be posted in January, hopefully along with the long-awaited Chapter 7.

How to Go Home Again End-of-Year Special 2024

Hi everyone!

From today until 31 December, I'm going to be posting snippets (usually 1k words in length) from scenes spanning all 40 chapters of How to Go Home Again (my FFXIV fic), highlighting what I think are the best parts of the beginning, middle, and end points of each of my characters' arcs throughout the Level 1 to 17 MSQ.

This will serve as a masterpost for these snippets. Posts are scheduled for 6:00PM Eastern time. I will try to keep the queue stocked at least a couple of chapters ahead at any given time.

Day 1: Carteneau

Day 2: The Missing Member

Day 3: Greatloam Growery

Day 4: Milvaneth Sacrarium

Day 5: Woad Whisper Canyon

Day 6: Buscarron's Scar

Day 7: The Quiveron Manse

Day 8: Poor Maid's Mill

Day 9: Snakemolt

Day 10: Beaconhill Lighthouse

Day 11: The Waking Sands