A Title Guessing Game

A Title Guessing Game

If anyone can guess (or come close to guessing) the title of my SGE WIP longfic, or any of its details, I will post a brief excerpt from the draft. The fic's title is fittingly long, considering its anticipated length.

This is the title's abbreviation:

TOTSMOV41

I don't mind if anyone comes up with ridiculous answers either. If anyone does want to have some fun with the prompt, I'll be entertained, of course. So, have at it, in any way you want, as outrageous as you want! I’m literally inviting you to bring your assumptions.

You can comment below. Let the games begin!

Also, just so no one gets their hopes up, don't expect this fic anytime soon, not for months and months, or even a year or more, I'm willing to bet. It's going to take so long to organize my notes, arrange my outline more efficiently, and draft the thing itself, and I'm probably going to have to wait for a vacation to work on it. So, that's the status update though this is the first time I've really announced this fic formally.

Probably, the most abstract clue I could possibly offer you is this music. It is my fic's "theme song," in terms of tone. It's not entirely representational of the fic as the fic has some humorous moments. Yet, I've been associating this song with the fic, so it's my subjective interpretation. So, if you were to read the draft, there is a chance it would not fit 100%, so you can take the music in broad strokes, as some of the rising and falling plot beats or the shape of the story. (You can skip to around the timestamp 1:28 and listen from there onwards if you don't want to listen to the whole video.)

To me, the music evokes vibes like a phoenix rising from the ashes. When all is lost, when you've reached the "darkest night of the soul," and everything is hopeless and futile. The tension ramps up. Blood courses through veins, quickening. Becoming faster and faster, punctuated, overlapping. One trial after another. Trial after trial. It all comes to a head, a crescendo, the tension lancing through you. And you endure a hard landing, jarring your feet.

If you examine my description, you may find oblique, "symbolic" spoilers, so I doubt they'll be apparent. Anyway, I hope that I will be able to echo this tone in my fic, to be as "loud" and chaotic in certain parts of it.

But, when you guess, by all means, you can ignore the music, if you have any other ideas. To rule out some guesses, this fic is not exclusively a prequel-focused one.

Also, @heyo-428 this is the "crystal and bathtub" fic I told you about, if you're still interested. But, no need to engage if you don't want to! The answer may be more obvious to you, I suspect. And, if you want to, I'll let you present the miniscule details I gave you the other day.

“The nerve of some Evers, Master!” harrumphed the former Dean Humburg. “Can you imagine thinking yourself above murder?”

“No,” said Rafal, his throat parched. “What dull existences they must lead.”

This is not a fic-related excerpt. It's just a random dialogue exchange, if anyone is wondering. Some variation of it might make its way into a WIP, but no guarantees.

Facts about The One True School Master of Vault 41

Tedros and Japeth-related things would entail too many major spoilers, so this is probably all you’re getting for now:

Rafal confesses to Sophie that he breathed part of his soul into her toward the end of the second Great War.

Rafal reads his own obituary. And also sees the multitude of vandalism that accompanies it.

Rafal attends a rather depressing, actually, positively dismal Ever tea party. Agatha insults him, despite the fact that he has better table manners than her. They mock each other. And he chokes on his finger sandwich. (But, I suppose genocide weighs more on the morality scale, in terms of minor infractions and major transgressions that will send Pollux rolling in his grave like a roast pig on a spit over subjects which mustn’t be discussed at tea parties.)

Agatha unnecessarily feeds her savior complex and plays chaperone.

Sophie is fashionable and traumatized. Business as usual.

Agatha commits a burglary.

Rafal trains the Nevers in classical dance. (I promise it’s vaguely plot-relevant.)

Agatha trains the Evers for war.

Sophie performs an archival search and reads Fala and His Brother.

The fic is still largely unwritten, so things may be subject to change later on.

Man's Fallibility & Immortality

I found a practically perfect song, by my interpretation, to add to my Rise to Fall playlist. (I haven't cleaned up/updated the playlist fully, so I'm not posting the whole thing yet, but I think this particular song warrants its own post.)

First, listen to the song: Nothing's New - Rio Romeo

Then, what follows below is something of a tragedy-analysis, abstract, meta-thing/omniscient prose narration experiment. I don't know what it is—an outpouring of thoughts. It may strike a similar chord as my narration at the end of Simony and its epilogue.

(Simony was a prediction fic I wrote before the publication of Fall. An extremely erroneous one though. I still think it could work, but oh, how wrong I was.

The direction Soman took the plot in, just, it was unpredictable, even if I did enjoy the book. I still like Rise better than Fall though, of the duology. If Rise had just ended at the point of: Vulcan is dead, Rafal tortures his students, and the brothers gradually learn to trust each other again, that would've been nice and comforting, honestly. But no, substitutes, substitutes, substitutes! On both sides. Drives me insane. Ack! But, I have four, short fics planned that have alternate endings to Rise and to Fall, to make up for it. Well, one of them is so far a little longer, three chapters long.)

If anyone wants me to analyze the actual lyrics more closely, I'm willing to do that too!

⸻

The tales.

They are all the same.

Good winning, Evil winning.

What difference does it make after centuries, really?

Everything probably feels numb and empty after a certain point.

Like nothing matters anymore.

Undiluted apathy after that certain point.

When? I've lost track.

When losses and victories all ring hollow, and all sound the same.

The End.

That's all It wrote.

The sum of lives distilled down to ink and illustrations.

Nothing beyond that. No life, no spark.

What more is there? When nothing will ever satisfy the restless souls, not even an Ending all to themselves.

Just pages that will yellow with time even if the stories themselves are timeless because nothing changes.

Nothing ever changes.

There's no evolution.

Every tale is the same.

It becomes nothing after nothing, not victory after victory, when you're ageless like we are.

And how, if that's how it is?

Why bother?

Why bother at all?

It's a cycle that continues, with or without the brothers.

Ceaseless.

So, why should it matter?

It's the same with or without them.

Their position was always ceremonial.

After a while, anyone becomes tiring. Anyone.

And one person just isn't enough, when you have no one else.

No one else to shield you.

It gets old. The love just... fades, and wears out.

Perhaps, human love can only span for so long, and that's why humans are mortal.

Made mortal, and no one should traverse beyond that.

It always leads to hubris, and then, a fall.

An unnatural fear of death trained into them, when limits were never set, when power was never checked, when they expected to have all the time in the world.

Nothing is built to last. At least, not by the Storian.

It does whatever it pleases.

You can't extend a life past its time.

It will always end in ruin. Isn't that the lesson the storybooks teach?

A cautionary tale.

Again and again, the cycle continues.

Every failed holy-grail of immortality, every spilled cup drawn from the fountain of youth, every cursed head of lettuce, every white snake, every chalice of sleeping draught that led to execution after execution, every baptism that succumbed to primordial wickedness, every impoverished fisherman's hovel?

Why not a tale about two brothers?

One where two are felled.

To caution against mortal greed that even immortality can't peel away.

To caution against always wanting more until you're left with nothing.

Nothing at all.

Just like how you can't truly resurrect anyone as who they once were, you can't revive the soul that a person once was.

And you can't play at being God because it defies the rules of nature.

And all that we know about transience and permanence and how ephemeral everything else is.

Everything but Man, who vies to leave a legacy wherever he goes, at any price, even at the cost of his soul, not life.

⸻

Now, I do wonder if I made anyone emotional? I certainly tried this time around, to be a provocateur like Soman is. Tell me what you think, if you want.

One True King Tagging Announcement & TOTSMOV41 Excerpts

I finally figured out how to fix the visibility on one of my posts that didn't appear in the main tags, and thought this information could be useful to anyone that posts about SGE, particularly The Camelot Years.

Originally, I tagged this post, excerpts from my WIP longfic, titled The One True School Master of Vault 41, using the relevant tag "otk." The fic itself is an alternate continuity of One True King, involving Rafal, Sophie, Agatha, the Wizard Tree, and Dovey's crystal ball. However, I just discovered that all posts tagged under "otk" have been hidden because for some, unknown reason, certain posts under the tag violate Tumblr's Community Guidelines. So, whenever you reference One True King, I'd advise tagging your posts with the full title "one true king," to avoid any issues with visibility.

Furthermore, if anyone reads my excerpts, I'd love to receive any kind of feedback/concrit, or to hear your thoughts and reactions! And, I might be willing to answer any questions you have around the fic, assuming I can avoid discussing major spoilers from my plot.

You know that one kind of scene where what's visibly going on appears to be one thing, especially from the perspective of outsiders, but in reality, something entirely different is happening? TOTSMOV41 has one of those scenes, and I'm so excited for it, but it's not even close to the beginning of the story since it requires some significant set-up. I have it outlined, but it's going to be a long time until I write that one.

There's a misleading, but not entirely false, August Sader prophecy: "Agatha" "dies" for "a prince."

If anyone wants to guess what really happens, and comes close, or gives interesting guesses, I'll post a another excerpt, much shorter than the last, probably of some funny, Agatha-bickers-with-Rafal dialogue.