As if ...

 Existing entries will remain, but I will no longer be posting or crossposting to LJ.

Year-end fic summaries and posts about new stories will be on Dreamwidth (or you can check Ao3).

Not the greatest year, in any sense of the word. So many losses, large and small; so much hatred and miscommunication and pettiness and sorrow in the world.

Even before November 8, creating fanworks had come to feel like swimming upstream in a hailstorm: but I kept at it. Had a few things to say and a gift or two to deliver, and wasn't going to quit before everything was done.
 

Each Day is a Blessing World of Warcraft, Fel Rangari Anaara	After fleeing with her people from Argus to Draenor, Anaara becomes the only Rangari to join the enemy. A stray musing on a wowhead entry sparked this one. 4100+ words ...........................................................................................................................
Cenotaph World of Warcraft, Wrathion/Anduin	Near the end of his life, a widowed former king in declining health reunites with an old friend. Gift for [Unknown LJ tag]  Though it is a pairing that generally melts my heart and makes me grin, I didn't think i'd ever write any Wranduin… and then this prompt came along, and boom. 17,000+ words ...........................................................................................................................
Light's Heart World of Warcraft, Xe'ra	They are so afraid, so desperate for a savior.. A drabble sparked by a conversation with Mipeltaja. 100 words ...........................................................................................................................
Requited World of Warcraft, Kael'thas/Rommath	After his death in Tempest Keep, Kael'thas dreams of Rommath, and Quel'Thalas. Gift for alternatedoom [Unknown LJ tag]  A sidestory of sorts to Deceiver, with angst and body horror. 1600 words ...........................................................................................................................
Deceiver Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, Kael'thas Sunstrider	Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider serves the demon lord known as Kil'jaeden the Deceiver. But Kil'jaeden is not the only one skilled at deception. The completion of a story idea from 2007. Six years of thought and planning, four years of writing, this novel-length "lore slalom" was both exhausting and exhilarating to write. (Chapter 20 technically wasn't posted by the end of the year—which was my goal—but it did go off to beta around then.) @165,000 words ...........................................................................................................................

 

 

This entry was originally posted at https://silverr.dreamwidth.org/116….

Chapter 20 of 20, and an Appendix, now posted.

Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider serves the archdemon Kil'jaeden the Deceiver. But Kil'jaeden is not not the only one skilled at deception..

Deceiver on FFnet :||: Deceiver on Ao3

Almost 10 years after the story idea first sparked, 5 years after I posted the Prologue, 160,000 words and 650 screen shots later, it's finally complete.

Author's notes for earlier chapters are here (it has become a very long post).  Author's notes have been appended to the novel as Chapter 21.

This entry was originally posted at http://silverr.dreamwidth.org/9189….

Summary: After fleeing with her people from Argus to Draenor, a draenei hunter becomes the only Rangari to join the enemy..

Each Day is A Blessing on Ao3 :||:  on FF.net

Fel Rangari Anaara is a fel-corrupted eredar — the skin of her face is red, and her arms and legs are charred and cracked and ooze green fel corruption—sitting on a mushroom on the southern shore of Tanaan, looking across Tanaan Channel in the direction of Elodor and the Altar of Sha'tar in Shadowmoon Valley. Although hostile, hunters can approach quite close without aggroing her (non-hunters will be one or two shotted). When defeated, she drops an item, the Vial of Fel Cleansing, which allows hunters to turn the felbound wolf aberrations of Tanaan Jungle into tameable beasts.

Note: This story also includes beautiful fanart of Anaara by Mipeltaja

Written for the halfamoon challenge.
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This entry was originally posted at http://silverr.dreamwidth.org/1135….

Not a big year in terms of quantity, but I am happy with the three pinch hits and the one promptficI did write—and happily, I also made progress on Deceiver.
 

By Sea and Sun Espouse'd Hellenic Myth & Lore, Hektor/Andromache	Enroute to their wedding in Troy, Andromache and her future husband begin to get to know each other. Pinch hit for rarelywritten  2,500 ...........................................................................................................................
Before I Was Gay If I Were Gay (song), OMC/OMC	Sooner or later, most songs get stale. When that happens, you probably need to switch to a different song—or, at the very least, add new verses to the old one. ** Over a bottle of whiskey and a bag of Hallowe'en candy, the relationship between two old friends begins to shift. Pinch hit written for jukebox . It took me a day to get in the right headspace to write a story with all-original characters again — it's like writing blank verse compared to fandom canon's sonnets — but it was fun. 4,000 ...........................................................................................................................
Eclipse Original Work Sun Priestess/Moon Priestess	The eternal story: dark, light, structure, chaos, order, abandon, passion, lies, truth, love, sorrow, descent, ascension. Pinch hit for tagyourit An all-female society of sun-worshipping vampires and the moon priestesses who willingly feed them, wrapped up in angsty soulbonding and tied with a body horror-bow. 2,500 ...........................................................................................................................
Marginalia World of Warcraft, Rommath	As Grand Magister Rommath will tell you, being a member of the Six is an overrated privilege. A promptfic of sorts. Written after reading speculation about a small potential spoiler from Legion, it's  dedicated to the people whose discussion of Rommath broke my heart. 900 ...........................................................................................................................
Deceiver Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, Kael'thas Sunstrider	Prince Kael'thas Sunstrider serves the demon lord known as Kil'jaeden the Deceiver. But Kil'jaeden is not the only one skilled at deception. I made progress after breaking the '2 months per chapter' barrier. Hoping to have the remainder of the novel drafted by the end of the year, I tried to use NaNo to finish (which did not succeed); I then tried to use December to achieve completion, and while that also failed, I did make progress on drafting the last 5 chapters + a sidestory. @110,000+ posted,  (ongoing) ...........................................................................................................................

 

 

This entry was originally posted at http://silverr.dreamwidth.org/1036….

on Ao3 :: | :: on FFnet

Written as result of this post. Because sometimes the ideas that people toss out as they speed past hit me in the face.

(Note: mild spoilers for the Legion expansion.)  Heh, well, so it seems as though that 'detail' was simply in the Legion alpha to troll dataminers. Still, I do think that if Rommath ever had to go through the archives and found those papers, he'd have the same rection.

This entry was originally posted at http://silverr.dreamwidth.org/1117….

An eleventh-hour pinch hit written for tagyourit , this merges the request for sun priestess/moon priestess with requests for worldbuilding, vampires, soulbonding and body horror.  By far the strangest thing I've ever written (and my first attempt at body horror), to my joy the recipient was pleased with it. 

The eternal story: dark, light, structure, chaos, order, abandon, passion, lies, truth, love, sorrow, descent, ascension.

Very very loosely based on the fairy tale "East of the Sun, West of the Moon."

:||: Eclipse on Ao3

This entry was originally posted at http://silverr.dreamwidth.org/1103….

Steven Lynch's "If I Were Gay" is a funny song. When I saw a pinch hit for it fly by on the jukebox_fest  comm, I decided to tackle it. The result was my first entirely original fanfic in 11 years, and the realization that quite a bit of double entendre can be mined from candy names.

Sooner or later, most songs get stale. When that happens, you probably need to switch to a different song—or, at the very least, add new verses to the old one. ** Over a bottle of whiskey and a bag of Hallowe'en candy, the relationship between two old friends begins to change.

Before I Was Gay on Fictionpress :||: Before I Was Gay on Ao3



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This entry was originally posted at http://silverr.dreamwidth.org/1039….

(I'm sorry I can't recall who asked me to post this!)

Alongside my default playlist of 8+ hours of rain and surf sounds, I've accumulated an instrumental playlist for my World of Warcraft novel Deceiver that might serve others needing to write about despair, unrequited love, existential angst, and similarly-cheerful themes.

I haven't listed conductors/performers if other than the composer. Anything marked with an asterisk is on the playlist twice.

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Airbase, Cherubini, et al.   
"Ocean Realm (Kil'jaeden Remix)"
SK Gaming World Firsts (DJ Bluerose)

The only non-official .mp3 here, the only one specifically connected to the Warcraft universe, and the only one with words. Years ago my friend jacqland extracted the audio from the HD video of the SK Gaming World First Kil'jaeden defeat (the lore surrounding Kil'jaeden in integral to the novel)

Other than my standard surf-and-rain playlist (which also burbles while I sleep), this is by far my most-played track. (If anyone's curious, I did purchase all three songs used in the mix, though none of them have ever sounded quite right without Kil'jaeden rumbling "Oblivion!" and "Destruction!" *g*)


Barber, Samuel
"Adagio For Strings, (Op 11)"     

For years, this song has seemed to me to be the absolute distillation—into heartachingly musical form—of yearning and regret. (Barber apparently grew to resent the work, as it overshadowed all of what he thought were his better works.)


Budd, Harold
"Dark Star" and "Abandoned Cities"  from Abandoned Cities

Long, low volume, ominously droning ambient pieces.

  
Eno, Brian
"LUX 3" and LUX 4" from LUX
"Theme from 'Creation' "  from Music for Films 3   
"The Lost Day"  from On Land   

Eno has been one of my favorite musicians for (*gulp*)  35+ years now.  Most of his electronica is too light-infused to work for this playlist, but the first three listed do a good job of leavening the playlist with a thoughfulness that invokes Netherstorm, and "The Lost Day" is as unsettling as the Harold Budd pieces.


Liszt, Franz   
"Nuages gris, S. 199"  from The 50 Darkest Pieces of Classical Music   

For a long time this was the "Scourge invasion" piece; it's now shifted to being the "assault Arthas in Icecrown" piece.


Pärt, Arvo   
"Pari intervallo"  from Light   
"Für Alina: 1"  and "Für Alina: 2" from Alina - Spiegel im Spiegel    
"Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten For Strings & One Bell"  from Fratres        
"Trisagion"  from Litany       
"Festina Lente"*  from Miserere           
"Tabula Rasa - Silentium"  from Sanctuary
"Tabula Rasa"  from Tabula Rasa
"Spiegel im Spiegel, For Violin and Piano"  from The Very Best of Arvo Pärt

Pärt ties with Prokofiev as my favorite classical composer. For me the appeal of most of his music is that it often manages to be simultaneously full of both sorrow and hope. (The Cantus is the piece I'd want played at my own funeral.)

For me "Trisagion" is Kael's theme music as a character; though I don't necessarily like assigning adjectives because they can be limiting, for me the piece has an overall feel of "heroic melancholy" interspersed with sections that remind me of the panicked, futile struggle of an animal in a trap.

"Spiegel im Spiegel 2" is a perfect Kael > Jaina theme.  Listening to it as I write this, I can imagine the piano part as Jaina and the violin part as Kael: the mostly cheerful and diligent piano melody seems almost unrelated to the mournful strings that accompany and quietly echo it. I didn't necessarily have this music in mind when I was writing their scenes (and at any rate the playlist is on shuffle & repeat) but what I hear in the music is completely how I see that unrequited relationship.


Satie, Erik   
"3 Gnossiennes"   from Satie: Piano Music [Disc 2]   
"Six gnossiennes: Gnossienne No. 1"*
"Six gnossiennes: Gnossienne No. 3"
"Six gnossiennes: Gnossienne No. 4"

These aren't necessarily sad pieces, but for me they have a certain je ne sais quoi that suits Silvermoon and the quel'dorei / sin'dorei in general.


Stars of the Lid   
"Even If You're Never Awake"*  and "Tippy's Demise"*  from  … And Their Refinement of the Decline   

A recent discovery, this ambient drone music perfectly captures the mood I want to be in while writing Deceiver.

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One piece that was on the playlist for a while was Mozart's "Masonic Funeral Music in C Minor, K. 477 (Maurerische Trauermusic)."  There are parts of it that are perfect for Dalaran and Northrend, but ultimately it felt too bouncy compared with the other pieces. I also had "Murder" from the 1997 Berserk anime OST in the playlist for a while as well.

"Oblivion!"

This entry was originally posted at https://silverr.dreamwidth.org/916….

Enroute to their wedding in Troy, Andromache and her future husband begin to get to know each other.

Pinch hit written for the rarelywritten  exchange.

- § - on FF.net  - § - on Ao3 - § -

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This entry was originally posted at http://silverr.dreamwidth.org/9694….