Wallah!
I FUCKING FINISHED IT!
I finished the main writing process.
\o/
65 k in exactly five weeks! That's not bad going o_O
It'll be one hell of a job to clean it all up, especially what with the amount of historical/OC stuff and pretty much everything where I tried to add in more detail about people's everyday lives, their religiosity and stuff like that. Although I'm a little worried it'll baffle some people who aren't familiar with stuff like the Arabian Nights--the whole perveries mixed with pieties type of thing--it still pleases me that I managed to put in more of that stuff. The epilogue is quite pious right after a boatload of smut, but IDGAF, it's pretty damn accurate for what life would've been like back then. I've spent so much time in cultural studies that I always worry about things like that, because I sometimes become blind to the contradictions Westerners will see in things that I've learned to "read" myself as normal for a certain culture. Like, the other day I forgot that oh yeah, the images of Hindu deities are kitschy to most Westerners and that the whole multiple arms thing is weird, whereas I'm so used to the iconography and the multiple hands=multiple attributes of a deity thing is something I understand immediately. And that it wouldn't be the weirdest thing for a medieval Muslim married couple to discuss God's mercy when they were making love because married love wasn't considered sinful, whereas in medieval Christian Europe it'd be all "OMG AAAAH GOD IS WATCHING OH FUCK WE ARE HORRIBLE SINNERS LET'S GET THIS OVER AND DONE WITH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AAAAH--" and so on. There's a surprisingly big difference between that thing where in Christianity, marriage is essentially a necessary evil whereas in Islam it's something you have to do in order to remain respectable. And while the latter has a lot of negative stuff resulting from it too, especially for women, there's also some good stuff there to mine for character development. Especially as this story is about a woman who wants to get married and it's awful when she does (because Ahmad is an ass) and a man who doesn't want to get married (because Jaffar is a terrible whore) but it's wonderful when he does. AND THEN THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
But, yeah. Wow. FINALLY. *looks at what she wrote in the post above* You'll probably have less random infodumps about medieval Persia this way, too. There's still so much there to poke in that fic, but at least it has a beginning and an end and lots of tragedy and unfings and history and silliness and emos and cheetahs in between. And Jaffar POV! I wanted to do something I hadn't done extensively before, and he turned out great! I should probably add some disclaimer to the fic saying that it's not the usual Pwinzezz-grows-into-a-woman-and-to-love-Jaffar story, especially as it looks like that at the start. All the Jaffar/Princess sex scenes are from his POV, too, and that was good for variety so that I wasn't just going over the same ground. And speaking of which, I surprised myself with the epilogue by writing something that's very unusual for me, but you'll see it when you get there. All in all, it's probably closer to a traditional historical romance novel than most of my stuff o_O But it's still got the sort of porn you don't see much of outside fanfic, at least when it comes to the length of the sex scenes and the acts involved.
Anyway, I've got to stop blathering and collapse. Even if I'm way too restless to sleep.
But, you know, I HAVE A STORY!!111
I finished the main writing process.
\o/
65 k in exactly five weeks! That's not bad going o_O
It'll be one hell of a job to clean it all up, especially what with the amount of historical/OC stuff and pretty much everything where I tried to add in more detail about people's everyday lives, their religiosity and stuff like that. Although I'm a little worried it'll baffle some people who aren't familiar with stuff like the Arabian Nights--the whole perveries mixed with pieties type of thing--it still pleases me that I managed to put in more of that stuff. The epilogue is quite pious right after a boatload of smut, but IDGAF, it's pretty damn accurate for what life would've been like back then. I've spent so much time in cultural studies that I always worry about things like that, because I sometimes become blind to the contradictions Westerners will see in things that I've learned to "read" myself as normal for a certain culture. Like, the other day I forgot that oh yeah, the images of Hindu deities are kitschy to most Westerners and that the whole multiple arms thing is weird, whereas I'm so used to the iconography and the multiple hands=multiple attributes of a deity thing is something I understand immediately. And that it wouldn't be the weirdest thing for a medieval Muslim married couple to discuss God's mercy when they were making love because married love wasn't considered sinful, whereas in medieval Christian Europe it'd be all "OMG AAAAH GOD IS WATCHING OH FUCK WE ARE HORRIBLE SINNERS LET'S GET THIS OVER AND DONE WITH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AAAAH--" and so on. There's a surprisingly big difference between that thing where in Christianity, marriage is essentially a necessary evil whereas in Islam it's something you have to do in order to remain respectable. And while the latter has a lot of negative stuff resulting from it too, especially for women, there's also some good stuff there to mine for character development. Especially as this story is about a woman who wants to get married and it's awful when she does (because Ahmad is an ass) and a man who doesn't want to get married (because Jaffar is a terrible whore) but it's wonderful when he does. AND THEN THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
But, yeah. Wow. FINALLY. *looks at what she wrote in the post above* You'll probably have less random infodumps about medieval Persia this way, too. There's still so much there to poke in that fic, but at least it has a beginning and an end and lots of tragedy and unfings and history and silliness and emos and cheetahs in between. And Jaffar POV! I wanted to do something I hadn't done extensively before, and he turned out great! I should probably add some disclaimer to the fic saying that it's not the usual Pwinzezz-grows-into-a-woman-and-to-love-Jaffar story, especially as it looks like that at the start. All the Jaffar/Princess sex scenes are from his POV, too, and that was good for variety so that I wasn't just going over the same ground. And speaking of which, I surprised myself with the epilogue by writing something that's very unusual for me, but you'll see it when you get there. All in all, it's probably closer to a traditional historical romance novel than most of my stuff o_O But it's still got the sort of porn you don't see much of outside fanfic, at least when it comes to the length of the sex scenes and the acts involved.
Anyway, I've got to stop blathering and collapse. Even if I'm way too restless to sleep.
But, you know, I HAVE A STORY!!111