#vanlim

A quick note: If it seems like I am writing a ton on this fic with nary a chapter on AO3 in sight, yes. Yes. Because I'm really like a kid in a sandbox.. My primary concern with this fic is to have fun.

Back to the point of this post.

Just like with the sex scene (I gotta write some more of those) I'm finding that my aversion to 1st person may have been limiting? Like, the stuff that's so much clearer when I'm writing from "I" instead of "he" is crazy, and the differences between Alim and Vanyel, something I've been worried about because they are both Special Boys, are becoming a lot clearer. It's also helped me see better what Alim looks like 12 years removed from the Blight.

Vanyel turns over grief, worries, and doubts a lot in his mind. Alim shovels them into a corner. Alim, post Blight, was still very much caught up in being who he was in the Circle, but 12 years there are a lot of bang and dents that make him less, um, proper?

Machela’s farm was several days' walk from Vigil’s Keep, closer to the North Road than the coastline. It was a huddle of stone buildings, the biggest of which was the barn against which her family's home leaned like a drunken old man. The barn, key to their livelihood, sported a newly shingled roof while the family home's darkened shingles had started to crimp and lift several years ago. For the Keeses’, work came before leisure, comfort was only sought after all the work was finished and past generations had let the architecture of their homestead tell that story. It explained why Machela chose to forgo the customary offer of tea when he and Will arrived and went right to her complaint.

I've rewritten this damn paragraph half a dozen times and it still has issues that I haven't managed to address.

A) I all of a sudden don't think Machela's family would neglect the house like that.

B) The fourth sentence has some issues with its structure.

C) There's a better ending sentence in another draft, but it doesn't give the info this last sentences does.

The first part will, if all goes according to plan, cover Alim's arrival to the defeat up a big boss, but not THE big boss. It will be mostly from either Alim or Vanyel's POV, but there will also be some from Tantras and Ferra (a spur of the moment OC). The latter two will have a role in this first part but are going to be Big in the second part.

There are four bloody parts to this.

One: Alim arriving to the Big Boss fight. Classic quest, whump, bromance.

Outlined.

Much of the first draft done.

Two: The four characters sorting through feelings. complications, and a pre-murder mystery that leads to a bigger boss. Mystery, romance, angst.

I know the arc.

that's it.

Three: Years later, and the bIG WhuMp. I may be turning one of the four into a bad guy.

Detailed arc

A good deal of it drafted

Four: The 'depends on what I do at the end of the third part' bit where it changes to Vanyel in Fereldan.

Two scenes drafted

Fuck all done on every other front

I'm writing a bunch about how he gets Big Mad with Vanyel over some actions of Vanyel, and I kept having Alim get sulky the way he did in the Hard Way Home fic and in game (Jowan doing blood magic and Alistair walking away from the Wardens? Unforgiveable.), but of course, they've got to hook up and get it on at some point because the whole point of this fic is for me to get melodramatic and do things I usually don't. That can't happen if Alim has consigned Vanyel to the realm of unforgiveable jerk.

So no big sulk.

Thankfully, I finally realized he's 34-35. He's had a good 12 years of having to navigate his emotions and the politics of running the Fereldan Wardens and an arling. He can get Big Mad for a little bit, and then step back and think about how to resolve it.

I also had Vanyel being Wrong in this situation and was trying to think about how Alim could convince him of that. But Vanyel himself is almost 30 with his own perspective. It's not bad for Alim to understand that and realize that he's not going to be able to convince him. Vanyel's concerns are different, and he may have some good points.

If Kinnon, Alim's boyfriend in Kinloch Hold, met Vanyel.