Pyre (New Fic), and some notes

[queenlua]

Zihark shoots Ricardo another glance over his shoulder, and Ricardo knows for sure in that moment that Zihark's no noble, because no noble would ever look at him that way—wary, cautious, threatened. Pre-FE9 Daein.

Here at FFN.

So I tried to write Cormag for fe-contest. Then it turned into Tana/Cormag, and then it turned into mostly-Tana, and then it turned into this awful monstrosity that devoured a month of writing time and resulted in two completely different drafts, neither of which I ended up liking.

So that story's currently sitting in a time-out folder, because it's being super-rude to me and I'm going to revisit it again once it's had some time to think about what it's done, the little twerp.

Anyway, I was still in a fic-writing mood, so I looked at my giant list o' story ideas, and I'd scrawled "moar ricardo!" in there somewhere, referencing this random throwaway OC who was in an earlier fic, "Dog in the Vineyard."

…I just really liked writing him, okay? And I had a bunch of backstory for him which didn't make it into the earlier fic, and I didn't want it to go to waste (even though that backstory didn't end up in this fic, either, oops). Then I started thinking about what canon characters could be involved in a Ricardo story so that I wouldn't just be gratuitously writing OCs all over the damned place, and Zihark popped in. I hadn't wanted to revisit laguz hunts so soon, but uh, that seemed like the most natural and interesting scenario to throw them in, so that happened.

Anyway, I wound up with a (mostly) limited third person story, centered around Ricardo, which is really about Zihark and his hidden motives, but Zihark is smart/stoic enough to not give that much away, and Ricardo never quite "gets" it.

Oops. That doesn't sound like much of a story sounds like a really quiet story. It's so quiet that I'm a bit uncomfortable with it—I think my fiction tends to be louder and more plot-y than this story, in general, and it's hard for me to tell when I'm being too subtle/not subtle enough/etc with what's going on.

And using Ricardo as a weird, pseudo-observer-narrator (is there a term for observer-narrator in limited third person, instead of first person?) was... a challenge. A really interesting challenge, but a challenge nonetheless—he doesn't really lend himself to the role (he wants to be at the center of things! he wants to be kicking ass and taking names! etc), and it's possible using a different, less obnoxious OC in his place might've been easier, but I think he ended up working out OK in the end.

Oh, and also, that present tense thing. Normally I avoid it—I find it weird and limiting in most instances—but I really wanted a focused, tight feel to the whole hunt, and I suspected present tense was a good way to get this accomplished.

So yeah, writing this story was rather dicey and strange for me, and involved some riskier stuff that I normally don't mess with. But I think I like it enough at this point to release it into the wild, strangeness and all, so huzzah and such.

Comments

[amielleon]

Daein is obviously all laguz hunts, all the time. I mean, uh, yeah I did wonder a bit about that choice so soon after Dog in the Vineyard, but I really have no right to comment on the matter, because my fiction is like this giant mass of all dysfunctional relationships, all the time.

Incidentally, does Ricardo bear any relationship to the thief in FE1/3/11/12? I keep imagining him with blue hair in a ponytail.

[queenlua]

...*looks up FE1/3/11/12 thief*

ohai, there's a character with a super-similar name! news to me.

So no, there's no relation, but you can totally keep imagining him as a blue-haired ponytail dude if you want :P