hey! are you still giving director cuts for fics? cause i would really really love one on the Ghosts AU--both of them, if at all possible, cause they're some of my favourite asoiaf fics of all time <33 :DD

I am ALWAYS down to talk about my fic lol but VERY SPECIFICALLY these two because. Like. I finished tempest ages ago and wanted that to be a vvv self-contained story. It was over and done with. I was done!!! And then 2023 started and I was like: Maybe Not Lol.

So like, Tempest was totally just about women, right? It's about forgotten women, dead women, and legacies not wholly lost; what can be done in a world by a girl who is kind, loves her family, and can see the dead? Quite a lot! Apparently! It's the Tyrion quote -- We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads. -- but made real and honest and in-your-face, because there is no "before us," just what we have here and now, even when we think we have nothing.

And of course so much of that story is tied up in legacies, in living up to your family's expectations, in righting your family's wrongs, in doing better than those that came before you. But the ending that I knew I had to write-- because I believed it, because it mattered to me-- was one where that wasn't the ending. Because life cannot be lived for others, no matter if they're our ancestors or our friends: Sansa sends her dead family beyond the circles of this world and it's a triumphant moment for her even as it wounds her irreparably, because she is no longer bound to their desires, to anything other than her own memory and her own choices.

Enter Burn. God. This story was wholly and entirely conceived by me seeing HOTD and going "WHYYYY DO WE CAREEEEEEEE" and then being like "No Actually This Sucks. Let Me Write Almost 70k On Why." And THEN I was like "what if I resolved the Stark family issues in the first 50k and wrote another 70k on the Targ issues. What Then." And I spent five chapters torturing Jon Snow because he annoys me A Lot (insert joke on dia being the 21st century alliser thorne), talking about how civilizations founded on slavery/supremacy rhetoric aren't, yk, INSPIRATIONAL, and underling in bold red pen the idea that asoiaf culture is inherently fucked and cannot be saved except by walking away from it, Omelas-style. Idk if that comes through! But jeeeeeeeesus was that totes my specific thesis statement

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I'd love a director's cut of 'just a pinch of salt in the wound, you'll be fine', especially your thoughts on Gil-galad's mother!

The fic in question!

Ask for a director’s cut on my fics!

Ooooooh this is so recent that it's all right there in my memory lollll but like YES. Most of that story was because I kept seeing poll after poll on tumblr of what Gil-galad's real parentage was, and while I think that's a fascinating question maybe there's a story there, right? A story of this little kid who's the youngest son of a youngest son of a youngest son and manages, somehow, to become High King for the longest of everyone else in his family: who manages to do an incredibly good job of it as well.

So Gil-galad is very very ambitious, and very certain that he can do a better job than anyone else even though he's so young. And to succor that ambition, he leaves behind his family: he leaves behind his father and mother and sister, and in doing so he sheds the trappings of common concerns like love or duty or passion; Gil-galad walks into the gaping maw of kingship and never looks back. He wants to be king because he cannot bear to have someone else control him, and everything else that comes with that freedom- like responsibility, or hatred, or loneliness- is a cost he'll pay willingly.

And all of this is, at least partially, a response to his mother.

I'd never thought much of her before this story tbqh. We know Orodreth married her in Beleriand, and that she had two children (or, if you think Gil-galad was someone else's kid, then she had one child) in war-time Beleriand. At the same time that Finrod is telling Aegnor he cannot marry Andreth, Orodreth is having a grand old fuckfest with Legrin in Sirion. It's... jarring.

I also think there's this interesting niche between Sindar safely tucked behind Melian's girdle and the rest of the continent, well before the Noldor arrive. Surely that's a source of tension, particularly if families are split between safety and danger: I just racketed that up a notch, and imagined the resentment a Sinda soldier might have for Doriath if she was forced to watch her family die on the walls of the girdle while she was, by pure chance, saved. All of which means that Legrin is very... motivated to defeat Morgoth, and very singularly focused on that; she's a mother, yes, but a mother second to being a general.

So! A Sinda with no love for Doriath and no claim to Thingol's throne... and yet Gil-galad, in uniting the Havens of Sirion under one throne, has most of Doriath's refugees kneel to him, despite Thingol's living heir being right there. He's Legrin's son: he's inherited her focus, her determination, and her grit. Another way to put it: if Gil-galad inherited greatness from his Finwean father, he inherited his propensity for success from his mother.

Flings myself into the inbox to ask about your Queens of Numenor fic, which. Okay there's so much I /could/ inquire about, there's so much crunch to that story, but- can I get commentary/director's cut on how you decided who each Queen should be?

(Ohtacare is 100% my favorite, but they're all just. So, so real.)

-crownlessliestheking

The fic in question!

Ask for a director's cut on my fics!

Oh yes, the Most Tragedique TM story I've ever written for Silm fandom lol. I started writing the story for Nienna in the Innumerable Stars fic exchange, and I need to give a lot of inspiration to that request summary, which set me off on a tangent re: dreams and magic. But as I started writing- initially the fic was going to be solely about Elros' wife, and maybe talk a little about the effect that being mortal and marrying someone who was effectively only mortal because he chose to be that way would have on a person- I also started grappling with what I've termed as the Tolkien Foresight Issue.

The TFI is very much a me problem, because I don't personally believe in predestination; the idea that elven mothers can genuinely hold their newborn in their arms and give them a name that describes something of their future genuinely frightens me as, like, a concept. I'd been wrestling with that idea for quite some time in my own head, but as I began writing this story I realized that this was a) the best medium possible for that tension, when unnamed/forgotten women are the primary povs (and of course, the unwanted and intrusive parts of the canonical narrative) and b) I was going to write about it one way or another, so might as well embrace it. Which led me to wanting to describe different reactions to the TFI- and for that, I needed more POVs than just Elros' wife.

Enter 24 other queens.

When I thought about individual perspectives, I started out by sketching out the queens whose characters I firmly knew; Eressecuina, for instance, but also Rilma, Ancalime, Tinolime, Vanimelde, Elenniel, and Inzilbeth. Then I started elaborating around those fixed points. For instance: Rilma has an antagonistic relationship with Almarian, who in turn makes an effort to be closer to Erendis, who in turn values freedom more than safety (i.e. the opposite of Almarian's choices), which influences Ancalime's perspective.

Elenniel's storyline was inspired by me wanting to explore what could have inspired a sharp break from the Quenya to Adunaic between Ardamin and Adunakhor: I just think that having it be a product of this one woman's (unnamed, forgotten, erased) actions made a lot of sense. Elenniel herself is one of my favorites in the story, tbqh; she's so secure in her love for her husband (and, in turn, his love for her) that she can bear to be more rebellious than many of the other queens. But she's also seeing the degeneration of Numenor from its heights- which began with Herucalmo, who usurps the throne and lets his son/grandson grow up in Umbar instead of Numenor-proper (thereby letting more rebellious anti-Valar sentiment foster)- and she loves Numenor enough to want more than what it has. But I also wanted someone to have gone through what she went through before while making the opposite choice, which is why Ohtacare exists at all lol.

The rest of the story just flowed from those fixed queens I mention above- apart from that, I knew I wanted a warrior queen, and a scholarly queen, and that the majority of the legacies of the queens would be tapestries; I also wanted at least one queen from Umbar and another from Harad. I think it's fairly obvious which ones were central to the storyline- Meluviel, for instance, doesn't play that much of a role, and neither does Gimileth or Handasse- but they were valuable to portray other nuances re: the TFI.

And, really, even more than the character itself, I defined the queens by their reaction to the TFI (which, in-story, is the nightmare of the destruction of Numenor). I a) thought it was INCREDIBLY sexy to think of Numenor's drowning to be inevitable, bc what does that say about the Valar, that they could see the ending but still chose to put Numenor in sight of Valinor? Abt the ppl that follow the Valar even after the destruction of the entire island? Abt the idea that even if something is to die one day, there is something beautiful in it now? and b) to picture the queens fighting against it, accepting it, furthering it, ignoring it, etc etc. 25 POVs of different women having wildly different reactions. I have an excel sheet somewhere where I described some of that lmao. That and the dates. Of people's birth dates, death dates, ruling dates, age when ascending to the crown........ yeah. Idk if I've ever worked so much to make a fic canon compliant tbqh!

⭐+ the Jodhaa Akbar Jonsa AU!

The fic in question!

Ask for a director’s cut on my fics!

Whoo boy yes, this remains the closest fic to my heart despite it being *checks* FIVE YEARS since I published it???? wtf. Anyways, yes, love it all: the tension of the religion, the weight of separate cultures, the gaping chasm of a war that two people are charged with trying to fill. How do you fall in love with the son of the man that killed your mother's brother and your father's sister? How do you forgive the daughter of the man that has waged the war that ruined your life before you were ever born?

Sansa and Jon find out!

More to the point, I was diving into football fandom a lot at the same time I wrote this fic, and so a lot of that romanticism seeped into it- the youth, the desperation, the clawing howling surety that you are, actually, that good, and have to prove that on the biggest stage there has ever been. I genuinely didn't think many people would read the fic either; I wrote it for the jonsa exchange's fifth round (I think), and at the time I was definitely withdrawing from fandom myself as it became more and more virulent. Also the theme of the round was "historical movie AU", which............ was mildly concerning, because I don't watch that many historical movies! At the time the only ones that came to mind were a) Atonement, which I HATE SO MUCH, and b) Jodhaa Akbar. So I went with JA.

Which had the potential to be racist! I was incredibly aware of that, too: I'm not North Indian, I'm definitely not Rajasthani, and my own relationship with Hinduism is.... very fraught. But then I started writing. And it came easy. Idk if I've ever written such a long story so easily before; every single line was like water just flowing downstream. Most of the research, too, I actually did after finishing writing, mostly to find sources for my assumptions/cultural nuances.

And then there's the fact that the majority of the fic was written the day before and the day of me flying to India- I'd graduated from law school a few months before, but I was leaving behind my career for family reasons, and I was very much mourning that even as I insisted to everyone that I didn't regret leaving the US. There's a lot of feeling in the fic; it's smushed between the politics and anger and cultural differences, and it's totally a product of me being in one of The Most Feeling mindsets I can remember.

But writing the fic also opened a lot of doors for me, imo; until then I'd not really been writing anything off the beaten path, as it were. This story left me more open to experimentation, to delving into more controversial topics and approaching ideas I was less comfortable wrestling with. I think it's one of the stories I'm genuinely the proudest of writing under this pseud, and I also know that it's the reason why we got to know each other too: I'll always be glad I wrote it for that reason alone xxx