A history, an apology, an explanation, and a thank-you.
I started Shadow's Sacrifice when I was in high school, for my best friend Angel. It started off as a story between the two of us, and then we had some problems. An beta-editor on-line from the Souryuden ML misinterpreted something Angel said and rewrote the first chapter or so completely, and is currently working on that. (She's a great writer, so if you're interested, the link the last time I checked was http://fly.to/dragon_warden. Read it for an interesting different take on the brothers in the Arslan world. It's called "Delusions." The original version of Shadows, "Unspeakable Truths", which is very different, has poor grammar, and is MUCH funnier than this one, is available in the archives of the Souryuden ML on Yahoo.)
I got into a fight with Angel over this incident and some, and we scrapped the project. I started writing alone after we made up, because Angel only wanted to read the story, not write it. I wrote the first seven chapters, then took a looong break because I didn't think I could write a story with so many freakin' characters. In the break I wrote "Silent Acquisition" and started on "Art of Life", which has yet to be finished. Then I wrote the next two chapters and graduated from high school. In the interim between the end of high school and college, I wrote chapter 10 and then chapter 11, which officially connects Shadow's Sacrifice to "Silent Acquisition" with the Yuu Yuu Hakusho gang's appearance, although references had been made before hand. Chapters 12 and 13 were written during my freshman year.
The last quarter of my freshman year I took a short-story writing class, and absolutely *HATED* it. It killed all my interest in writing, and I actually decided then that I never wanted to write again.
But Christmas and Angel's bday came up again, so I started up again. Chapter 14 was written during the summer, as well as the first half of chapter 15. The rest of chapter 15 and "The Prince's Dream" was written during the fall of my sophomore year.
I hate, however, editing. It reminded me of my writing class and my experience with my first editor. Chapter 14 was written during the summer, so I found eventually time to edit it and put it up on the website. Chapters 15 and "The Prince's Dream" was done but left on the "to edit one day pile." Anyone who emailed me asking about the fic was sent a beta copy, but otherwise, I left it alone. (So those who have emailed me have actually been waiting for a year for the next chapter.)
Then I lost interest in Shadow's Sacrifice and concentrated on another project of mine that I had started my senior year of high school for Angel and been working on when I was not working on Shadows. I entered Nanowrimo (nanowrimo.org) and wrote a novel based on it. In the meanwhile, I had also started on another Arslan story, one for fun. It was mostly comedy (though Arslan gets to angst a lot) and is another Arslan/Soryuden crossover. This project stopped when my computer died and I only have the remnants of the first few chapters (the first three are available on the archives of the Yaoi Arslan ML).
At this point, I more or less left Shadows for dead. I didn't write any of it, at all, during my junior year. I did, however, still have some people ask me about it. One was the lovely Shrenee, who volunteered to edit chapter 15 and "The Prince's Dream." She's who you have to thank for the next few parts being up, that, and our changes on the website. (I had originally started the website with my sister as a place for her gorgeous skins/wallpapers and my fics. It fell into disfavor, however, for a few reasons: she became more involved with her other site, Liar, Liar, and I stopped updating. And we both hated the pop-ups. Then our redirect page server went out. We got another one, but the pop-ups were still there and I didn't want to edit html for a site that I disliked visiting.)
My computer died in October, so I stayed away from Arslan stories for a while after that. At this point it had been almost a whole year since I finished "The Prince's Dream" and chapter 15.
Then, this last spring, something happened. Yaoi Arslan ML started a contest. I decided to enter and I finished the story, My Heart to Joy at the Same Tone, in 2 weeks. It has been a while since I've watched Arslan, but I re-watched it as research for this story. And writing the story was fun; a lot more fun than writing has been for a long time.
I lost interest in Shadows because it was becoming difficult to write. I had a vague idea of how I want the series to conclude, but it seemed too cliché, too big, and too epic-ish to write. I couldn't figure out how I would write something on such a grand-scale, so I avoided it. And as time passed, I forget a lot that I wanted to write, and then it seemed too hard to continue what I had left off. And Angel was content with the other project, so Shadows was abandoned.
Writing My Heart to Joy at the Same Tone has since made me interested in Arslan fanfiction again. And my sister and I have moved to geocities, where there are less pop-ups.
I'm now in my last year of college. My goal is to finish Shadows before I graduate. Or at least get as close to it as possible. Future unbeta-ed chapters will be posted on either a livejournal or emailed out to anyone who's interested. I'm not sure yet.
I would like apologize to everyone for the looong hiatus, and thank those who have waited. Thank you for all of your emails, your support, and your patience. Thank you to Wendy, Joanna, Aki, and everyone else who has emailed me recently or posted a message that reminded me that there are some people who are still interested in seeing how Shadows ends. Thanks to Shrenee for editing. Thanks to RB for hosting the Yaoi Arslan ML contest, which rekindled my interest. Thanks to everyone else -- my net friends, T-chan, Torque, and Cai. Inga, for the fanart. And thank you to Tuttie, Lilith, Tschubi-chan, Jen, Seimei no Miko, and to everyone else who has ever emailed me or encouraged me.
Special thanks, of course, to my beloved sister, desert_spyder, and my best friend, Angel.
This is kind of an explanation for things to come. My writing style, I think, has changed a lot since I've started the fic. It's most noticeable during my breaks, like after chapter 7 and chapter 13. And since I've recently had my longest break ever... I'll try to keep the original flavor as close as possible, but if the style becomes drastically different after 15, now you know why.
I don't claim to be anything more than a fanfiction writer. There are still some stylistic differences of fandom that I'll stick too. I know some people are annoyed when they read Japanese phrases or words in fanfiction, but since I've written the first few chapters that way, I'll probably stay with it. The reason the weird 3-person pov was like that in the beginning, actually, was because I was visualizing it as an anime, or a manga, where we hear the thoughts of different people all the time. All the emphasis on hair and eyes is because it's usually the most distinguishing characteristic about what an anime person looks like that is describable in fiction. The phrases in Japanese I put in originally because I was used to reading subtitles of people's honorifics and there are some expressions that I felt didn't translate over, so I left it in its original language. (Or I wanted to get the feel of a subbed anime by leaving some untranslated and show-off what little Japanese I learned from jc. I don't remember.)
After I finished writing "From Every Depth of Good and Ill", I realized that My Heart to Joy at the Same Tone, since it's an anime prequel, can also take place in the Shadows Universe. So it is now the official background story for Narcasse, Darun, Guibu, and Eram. Future Shadows chapters will probably allude to it. And I think I spelled Hermes name differently in the two series, without realizing it (re-watching the subbed Arslan dvd was a different experience from my dubbed tapes). For consistency's sake, I'll return to the original spelling that I used-- Hermes, though in My Heart it's "Hirumes." Think of it as a change in translators.
And to anyone who has actually read this far-- a secret/my rationale: Guibu is blatantly hetero in Shadows while bi-sexual in My Heart because he's in love with Farangis, and ashamed of his past. That and in the 3 years before the anime he's been seducing people left and right, and has decided that overall he found seducing women more fun than seducing men. More on this later. The REAL person in his dream will also be revealed. And he and Narcasse both like to pretend that nothing happened, for Darun's sake and out of their own embarrassment because neither of them thought they would interact with the other ever again. And in my mind, he reintroduced himself in the anime following Farangis and because he's never officially introduced himself to Darun before.
Yup, there is a reasonable explanation for what happens in my fanfiction. Really.
--Karma, 7-11-04
Anirock Crackpot: www.geocities.com/anirock_crackpot
Direct link to Kar.ma.kai: www.geocities.com/slvrsh
A further post-note on titles: (7/18/04)
DAHLIAS FOR ANGEL is all that was supposed to be spelled (by the first letter of each chapter title). But the story is a lot longer than I thought it would be. I suppose now I need to look for additional words. Any suggestions?