succession of breath post-script

[ferdiath]

Do I have anything to say in retrospect about this fic. hm. I am uncertain. Second pass at Dying King (probably not my last. I am also such a big fan of the aesthetics of destruction. Fumi is mentally ill, but she’s also right—I am also mentally ill).

The title’s from a typhoon song (the title is always from a typhoon song, except when it’s not). I think at some point I have to bury my head and write my longer/more complicated projects or else just accept I’ve reached the cap of support I’ll ever get for what I write. Time loop AU and...somehow the Yachiyo fic (which as I’ve been reading back and reading back I have parts I really love and parts I really hate—less because they’re bad and more because I left so much out that it has these half-formed threads that I can’t even in good conscience trust you to get). It is what it is. If I ruminate on my writing for a moment (and really, why can’t I. Is this not just for me?) I’ve kind of always been like this as a writer. I get one thing that’s meaningful outside of myself and maybe my close friends, and the rest is self-interest for its own sake.

I always write series this way, using the latter parts to fill in scenes in the earlier parts (although the...hopefully third and final part of this will be different, for better or for worse). Building into the time between Akira deciding to conquer death again and Yachiyo killing her. Dying king is, like, super weird about the fate of Michiru/Saphir, who at one point is implied to be able to give the crown to The Knight (even after the king knows he’s dead), and also at the end of the story heading off with Franz—He’s also in Valhalla or w/e they call it specifically, so it’s kind of. Well. I don’t really know. I want Michiru to be dead—she needs to be dead for the third part.

I don’t really want to go back through my tweet history for this fic, because I think my primary thought/concern was matching the sort of complicated tone I have to give the underclassmen—I think they should match a more lighthearted tone, considering even when Mei Fan is struggling starira often likes to play it off for jokes, and Yachiyo deflects her skill through a sort of teasing joking style most of the time, and Shiori is, well, she gets to be the most serious of them because of Fumi, but even she’s not free of it (all of Siegfeld get to be the butt of the joke at one point or another). But considering the fate of Akira (and Michiru) were bygone conclusions, I wanted the underclassmen to contrast in their general energy—in the first part the scene of the three of them is them talking and joking and pretending everything is fine (even though Shiori and Yachiyo are plotting regicide). Where the death of Akira(/Michiru) is the breaking of a dark cloud over Siegfeld’s fictional kingdom, it contrasts by creating one within the three remaining Edels/Knights, particularly in Mei Fan, who is not a usurper of a tyrant king or confidant of the new one, but a layover from the old regime. Kind of. I guess it ties into Mei Fan’s Akira devotion, the implication of her need to find a path forward and her inability (or trepidation) to do so wrt arcana bond stories.

Hmmmm ok. These are always so silly and non-formed I don’t have a lot of concrete thoughts I just don’t want to inconvenience anybody with my thoughts and I ramble a lot. And, of course, it’s so hard for me to articulate how I feel about the things I wrote or what I intended so. It’s just a mess. I think …… ok.

I’ve been in a bit of a Monte Cristo freefall recently. It’s a very fun novel, really engaging for all it’s happenings, but I’ve been thinking between the novel and the musical adaptation I watched about my perspective on villainy and happy endings and catharsis. The novel ends with Monte Cristo finding new love with Haydee (who….was his slave when we first meet her…..he bought her to use in Mondego’s revenge (he killed her father and sold her into slavery) and pretty immediately lets her go but that does still happen and the way he talks about her to the other men before he sets her free is . Well this was written in the 1800s ? so . Not an excuse but. Is what happens ANYWAY) whereas in the musical he returns to his relationship with Mercedes (who in this version was expressly lied to that Dantes died and also never promised him that if he died she would kill herself—something she promises in the novel). If I could write the ending myself, I think he would instead live in Monte Cristo on his death (maybe build a dungeon there and lock Danglars in it, who he lets live penniless even though Danglars is the most explicitly maliciously responsible for his imprisonment). He has lost himself in becoming Monte Cristo and his quest for revenge, and I think contrasting Dantes in the beginning of the novel—kind to everyone, humble and self-effacing—with Monte Cristo who maintains an arrogance and cruelty of nobility/those with wealth, making him someone who properly achieved revenge but lost himself and his potential for happiness in the process, would be the most interesting and complex conclusion. Yachiyo achieves what she needs—the deposing of the tyrant, her own right to the throne—but loses something in the process (Mei Fan’s trust and support, and some vague othering feeling that neither I nor Yachiyo can voice specifically).

Someday I’ll write the complex fun motivation I wish main story Shiori got to have—I think so much about Yachiyo’s spy nonsense. This is related I swear. I think so much about it and I think about how Shiori is presented as so deferent to the Edels and trusting of them, but these were the people who (appeared) were closest to her before her departure from Siegfeld. Are these not the most likely responsible for Fumi leaving? Basically I want Starira but Shiori’s secretly trying to take down Frau Platin because she blames her for Fumi leaving (Akira is the exact same as she is in canon wrt Fumi). Basically any time I write Shiori being violent it’s always her on a revenge quest against an unforeseen enemy—Fumi for her departure betrayal, someone else for having been near Fumi and not somehow stopping it). It’s the same as canon for Shiori, who is fighting against an enemy who doesn’t exist, for a dream that is broken and buried beneath the ground. She will never get it back, even if she wants it.

I’m losing track. I think every choice we make has consequences. Even the just ones and even the ones we not only should make but have to, and we’re shaped by them all the time. It’s lame for Monte Cristo to be granted a happy ending. The question is removed—was he right to spend so much of his life on his revenge plots, or would he have been happier disregarding his vengeance in favor of living happily. Instead he gets a happy ending with his justice. Boring.

The choices they make here also have consequences, even though I just imply it. I only just imply things. A Bear fic nowadays is scenes of people implying things and then someone kills someone else. It is what it is.

I want to stop using the major character death tag. I don’t want to stop killing major characters. But, like, I’ve never written a meaningful death, and I think the fics are fun enough to not warrant the tag. Whatever. I can’t think of much else to say. I wrote another fic. I hope people read it and like it. I was possessed by something to finish the fic last night (maybe was the idea of the heat breaking. Not sure.

Anyway fingers crossed the next time I finish a fic it’s the fucking HLD au that has been gnawing at my brain. Or akifumi pt 3. we’ll see. Probably it will be the hallucination nonsense—every time I explain what I work on I lose time off my life. I’m sorry for being alive </3 I am desperate for validation all the time and I probably just have to learn not to be LMFAO