#ftdwr

Hi anon!

Re: how would Pitch even react to being called "daddy"?

I definitely think you answered the question when you said 'I feel like it would definitely be an issue.' Like I think it would absolutely be an issue and a hard limit for him. I think it could be different for the version of Pitch in The Golden Age that Never Was because his daughter is still alive, and so the word isn't as loaded with grief and also him wanting to sort of keep it as a memorial word? It has the potential to mean more things.

But yeah in the SALverse, I think Pitch would be pretty disgusted with the idea. Just...instant turnoff.

Well, Augus never really adored Pitch. He had Stockholm Syndrome because the Nightmare King raped him repeatedly and Augus was sure he was going to die, so he became completely dependent on the Nightmare King for his life and promised him anything in order to get free. The adoration was never real. It was complete dependence.

And I can’t imagine Jack as a repeated, sadistic rapist. And Augus would never be interested in someone like Jack otherwise.

So I have no idea how to answer this question, sorry!

Oh god the Jelsa stuff, lol.

None of that stuff existed when the movie first came out, so the only like, ‘ship wars’ (which weren’t really very warring at all) was like, whether you shipped Jack with Bunnymund or Pitch (or rarely, Toothiana). That was it.

But then like, the Jack/Hiccup, Jack/Elsa, Jack/Merida, Jack/WHOMEVER started and it was like OH HE’S THE CHILDREN’S FILM ANIMATION BICYCLE. Everyone gets to take a ride, lmao.

Hallo!

I decided to start writing Game Theory well before the end of Into Shadows We Fall. In fact some people will remember that I started talking up Game Theory before ISWF had even ended, and promised I had some random ‘hatesex’ chapters, and that I’d put them up after Augus was defeated to keep with the timeline of the story.

I officially put up the first chapter around the time Augus was defeated, since it was set after his defeat anyway. The actual ‘date commenced’ time on AO3 is incorrect, because I added a prologue years later, and this was a significant enough time that it changed the entire date of the fic.

According to Word, I started the first chapter of Game Theory in August 2013, and to give you an idea of how fast I used to write, and how inspired I was, I’d written fourteen chapters by September 2013. Into Shadows We Fall finished in early September 2013, so I was well and truly aware that Game Theory would have a future by that point, and would be a thing.

I think one of the reasons I was so obsessed with it, was because I really struggle with writing happy endings, and ISWF has like 5 chapters of happy ending. I don’t believe in short, unfulfilling happy endings, and I’d put Jack and Pitch through hell, they definitely deserve five chapters of happy ending! So I want the happy endings I write to feel full, meaningful and earned for the readers (and the characters), but this also makes the end of the story often the hardest part for me to write (unless the ending is really bittersweet, but ISWF really wasn’t, it’s probably one of the happiest endings I’ve ever penned). So I really needed something dark and angsty and crunchy to make up for all the healed happiness I was writing, and I didn’t feel like writing another Jack/Pitch story at the time.

Because so many people weren’t interested in Game Theory and only cared about the end of ISWF, this was also a really bittersweet period of time where I got a lot of asks that varied in tone from ‘very polite’ to ‘disappointed’ to ‘outright rude’ asking/telling me to stop writing original stories with ‘uninteresting characters’ and keep going with Rise of the Guardians content which one anon said very succinctly: ‘Is all we’re really interested in anyway.’

I’m sure it was true for that anon. I lost a lot of followers and readers immediately after ISWF. I never said I made smart writing decisions, I pretty much follow where my heart takes me, lol.

Anyway, so I knew before the end of SAL that Game Theory was a thing, because I’d already started it, and was already putting up chapters, and was even already going from ‘this is just a few chapters of hatesex to get it out of my mind’ to ‘this is a thing, I think I can get these two a relatively happy ending’ (when I was sure, initially, both would have tragic endings).

To put in perspective how quickly I wrote it, I finished the final chapter in March 2014. Which means from start to finish, all of Game Theory was written in 8 months. It’s nearly half a million words. In that time, I also wrote some AUs, and started conceptualising both The Ice Plague and The Court of Five Thrones. (People may also remember that I started talking about The Ice Plague as the direct sequel of Game Theory, before I realised that COFT needed to come next).

Yes! It’s the Shadows and Light series, which features two main fics, From the Darkness We Rise and Into Shadows We Fall.

Hiya anon! Firstly, get some sleep! :D

If Jack had been the one to be possessed by the shadows, is there anything in the world that could have recovered him? 

I mean, possibly, yes, but I never thought he’d recover from it anyway. Like even if he was ‘rescued’ I think it would break the Jack Frost that I wrote in the SALverse (and it nearly kills him in TGATNW, the other long Rise of the Guardian fic I’ve written). Like, Jack in SAL has a super fragile psyche, even if he could have been saved (and no, I don’t think something with his sister would have done it necessarily, I think it would have needed to be light-exorcism related)...the whole story would have turned into ‘and Pitch was left with a non-functioning spirit and then the world was defeated by Augus and team the end.’ It wasn’t a story I had any interest in writing.

Also was he supposed to be possessed, like that’s what Ondine saw in his future, but pitch changed the course?             

Not exactly. I liked the dual meaning, that Ondine seeing shadows made everyone assume Jack was going to be possessed (you can see this, from memory, in some of the comments). But that it could also be that Jack’s life would be filled with the shadows of loss - which is exactly what happens. He loses Pitch, because of the Darkness, and he loses a great deal more in ISWF (which you will see as you keep reading). If anything, he is far more traumatised by events in ISWF than he ever is in FtDWR. It is the darker of the two stories. That’s why it has the title ‘Into Shadows We Fall.’ Even though Jack isn’t the one literally possessed, he is the one who mentally falls into darkness because of what he loses. 

As Ondine says, she can’t see past the day after with Jack. And she certainly doesn’t see that Jack will definitively get possessed or not get possessed by the Darkness. (I think if she had seen Jack getting actually possessed, she would have been like, UM HOW ABOUT YOU STAY RIGHT HERE).

I mean you’re doing a great job of literally proving my point, anon, that sometimes going back and editing serials isn’t always a fun process for the author, even though they’re literally doing it to serve the story and the readers of the future, lmao. In part, I did that editing for people like you, to make the story more enjoyable.

I’d suggest trusting me - the author - and my choices. If you liked the story at all, chances are the editing helped to shape that.

Most of the choices were to remove excessive sentences (i.e. Jack thinking the same thing in five different ways in five consecutive paragraphs on a regular basis, which bogged down pacing), to fix grammar errors (it’s still not free of those entirely but it’s better than it was), to fix some formatting errors, and to fix continuity errors in characterisation (i.e. the make the dialogue more realistic or appropriate for their character, and in the cases of Gwyn and Augus, to make their characterisation more Game Theory appropriate). Ultimately, 10,000 words represents only 4% of the story, and given it’s a solid 400,000 words. It was an extremely light edit, sensitive to preserving the scenes that people fell in love with.